A WebGIS for Road Accidents Monitoring in an Urban Area

In the recent years, there is a growing interest in the analysis of spatial distribution of road accidents occurred over a territory, in order to identify the areas which are considered of high risk and improve road safety. In this context, the most advanced information tools, such as Geographical Information System (GIS), allow the collection, management and analysis of large geo-referenced databases concerning qualitative and quantitative information about road accidents. Moreover, a WebGIS, which is a GIS freely usable on the web, makes the data available for all kind of users (policy makers, scientists, analysts) and therefore can be considered a valid support system for planning suitable and effective actions for prevention road accidents.

In this paper, the development of a GIS project and the corresponding WebGIS application for road accidents monitoring over an urban area located in the South of Italy, are proposed. Their main features are discussed in order to highlight the potentiality of these tools in using raw statistical and geographical data to produce meaningful information for spatial analysis, mapping and identifying any factors contributing to road accidents.