• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.41-53
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• 2010

Traffic safety assessment is often accomplished by analyzing the number of crashes occurring in some geographic space over certain specific time duration. In this paper, we introduce a procedure that can efficiently analyze spatial and temporal changes in traffic crashes before-and-after implementation of a certain traffic controlling measure. For the analysis, crash frequency data before-and-after closing a major highway around St. Louis in Missouri was collected through Transportation Management System(TMS) database that is maintained by Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). In order to identify any spatial and temporal pattern in crashes, each crash is pinpointed on a map using the dynamic segmentation in GIS. Then, the identified pattern is statistically confirmed using an analysis of variance table. The advantage of this approach is to easily assess spatial and temporal trend of crashes that are not readily attainable otherwise. The results from this study can possibly be applied in enhancing the highway safety assessment procedure. This paper also makes several suggestions for future development of a comprehensive transportation data system in Korea which is similar to MoDOT's TMS database.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.91-100
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• 2010

Existing traffic safety studies have focused on identifying the relationship among roadway crashes, highway design and incremental weather condition such as rainy/ice weather. However, it is hard to find researches that studied the effect of sun glare on traffic safety although there are abundant evidences demonstrating that fatal traffic crashes are attributed to the sun glare. Affecting drivers'vision particularly during the morning or the evening time when the sun positions close to the horizon, sun glare directly deteriorate drivers'judgmental capability. In this paper, we numerically analyze the effect of sun glare on the drivers'vision in time and space domains. Applied to the roadways around St Louis area in the United States, the GIS based simulation analysis identifies the time of day in a year and the segments of highways that are potentially influenced by the sun glare. This study evidentially confirms the fact that roadway bounded for West and East directions have longer time influenced by sun glare particularly during Spring and Fall season than other roadways. The computational result provides risky time periods of day at intersections or pedestrian crossings where the sun glare potentially endangers traffic safety, which be utilized to reduce the crashes due to the sun glare.