Safety Data Analysis Tools
Highway Safety Manual (HSM)
The HSM provides information and tools to assist transportation professionals in making decisions that have a positive impact on highway safety. Focusing on objective measures of safety with a primary emphasis on crash frequency and severity, the HSM includes analytical tools to quantify and predict the safety performance of the variety of elements considered in road planning, design, maintenance, construction, and operation. The HSM also includes a synthesis of validated highway research and procedures that are adapted and integrated into practice.
Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM)
IHSDM is a suite of software analysis tools for evaluating the safety and operational effects of geometric design decisions. IHSDM is a decision-support tool that provides estimates of a highway design's expected safety and operational performance and checks existing or proposed highway designs against relevant design policy values. Intended users include highway project managers, designers, and traffic and safety reviewers in State and local highway agencies and engineering consulting firms. IHSDM currently includes six evaluation modules (Crash Prediction, Design Consistency, Intersection Review, Policy Review, Traffic Analysis, and Driver/Vehicle). The IHSDM software may be downloaded free-of-charge at http://www.ihsdm.org.
FHWA GIS Safety Analysis Tools v.4.0
Computerized crash analysis systems in which crash data, roadway inventory data, and traffic operations data can be merged are used in many state and municipalities to identify problem locations and assess the effectiveness of implemented countermeasures. By integrating this traditional system with a geographical information system (GIS), which offers spatial referencing capabilities and graphical displays, a more effective crash analysis program can be realized. The analysis tools include five separate programs to evaluate crashes: Spot/Intersection Analysis, Strip Analysis, Cluster Analysis, Sliding-Scale Analysis, and Corridor Analysis.
SafetyAnalyst assists State and local highway agencies to program site-specific highway safety improvements for implementation. It incorporates state-of-the-art safety management approaches in computerized analytical tools for guiding the decision-making process to identify safety improvement needs and develop a system wide program of site-specific improvement projects. With a strong basis in cost-effectiveness analysis, SafetyAnalyst can play an important role in ensuring that highway agencies receive the greatest possible benefit from each dollar spent on safety.
Resurfacing Safety Resource Allocation Program (RSRAP)
The Resurfacing Safety Resource Allocation Program (RSRAP) software has been developed to allow highway agencies to implement a process that selects a program of safety improvements, to be made in conjunction with resurfacing projects, that maximizes traffic safety and operational benefits resulting from the program. RSRAP selects this optimal safety improvement program within a user-specified budget constraint representing the agency's available improvement budget.