Analyzing traffic accidents with geographic information systems: The Ankara case

In recent years, traffic accidents caused more social and economic losses thannatural disasters and have become a national problem in Turkey. To solve thisproblem and to reduce the casualties, road safety programs need to bedeveloped. It is necessary to develop cost effective measures with low investmentdue to limited budgets allocated to such road safety programs. The mostimportant program is to determine dangerous locations for traffic accidents andto improve these locations from the road safety view point. The goal of the studyis to decrease the amount of the traffic accidents with fatality and casualty or totake the number of the traffic jams under a specific level. Increasing theconscious about the safety programs between the concerned foundations isnecessary for the safety studies in the future.In this study the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was used to detect theblack points quickly and correctly, to evaluate and implement the solutions. Themost important part of GIS is to create a database and next query. According tothe solution queries statistical analysis can then be done. The study helps theuser to view these results and the users? answers for the different goals.The superiority of the GIS on the other hand can save nongraphic features asgeographic reference data and it can connect these with the geographic mapfeatures.