Analysis of fatal and injury crashes by geographical information systems: Acase study of Gazi̇antep

According to General Police Department's 2013 statistics, Gaziantep ranks 10 in fatal and injury accident rankings in Turkey. The traffic accidents have became an important issue for Gaziantep as a result of the economical improvement of the city which has led to increased amounts of vehicles and immigrants. However; there is no causal relation or a model study to explain the relativity between the reasons and geographical locations of the accidents. Lack of such a study makes it harder to bring basic factors which affects fatal and injury accidents to a solution in real terms. In this study, it was aimed to identify accident hot spots according to geographical coordinates. For this purpose, information about the accidents which occur in 2013, provided by regional police department and a database created for analyze. With support of Geographical Information System (GIS), Kernel Density Estimation method used for create a model for find the parameters which is effective on accident occurrence. In order to do this, accidents were viewed on a map with locations using Geographical Information System (GIS) and were analyzed according to accident coordinates, time of accident, weather condition, type of road coat, type of road, proximity of accident areas to intersections, driver information, driver's use of alcohol, number and types of cars involved in the accident, driver, passenger, pedestrian distribution and reason of accident occurrence. As a result of the analyses conducted, it is concluded that hot spots are generally on junctures and possible solutions are offered for high risk areas.