Perspectives of a web-based software to improve crash data quality and reliability in Italy

Real‐world crash data play a vital part in the development of safer transport since information on crash data is essential as a means of understanding where and why crashes occurred in the past and how the occurrence of similar events may be prevented in the future. Crash databases provide the basic information for effective highway safety management but several existing databases show significant drawbacks which hinder their effective use for safety analysis and improvement. In Italy, the national crash database is maintained by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and presents major issues related to the crash report form, the crash classification, the crash location, and the crash severity. Moreover, almost all police departments use an out-of-date paper form, not in line with the national and international needs. Modern technologies offer potential for significant improvements of existing methods and procedures for crash data collection, processing and analysis. To address these issues, in this paper we present the development and evaluation of a web-based platform-independent software for crash data collection, processing and analysis named ReGIS (Crash Data Collection, Processing and Analysis). The software is designed for mobile and desktop electronic devices and enables a guided and automated drafting of the crash report, assisting police officers both on-site and in the office. The software development was based both on the detailed critical review of existing Australasian, EU, and U.S. crash databases and software as well as on the continuous consultation with the stakeholders. The evaluation was carried out comparing the completeness, timeliness, and accuracy of crash data before and after the use of the software in the city of Vico Equense, in south of Italy showing significant advantages. The amount of collected information increased from 82 variables to 268 variables, i.e., a 227% increase. The time saving was more than one hour per crash, i.e., a 36% reduction. The on-site data collection did not produce time saving, however this is a temporary weakness that will be annihilated very soon in the future after officers are more acquainted with the software. The phase of evaluation, processing and analysis carried out in the office was dramatically shortened, i.e., a 69% reduction. Another benefit was the standardization which allowed fast and consistent data analysis and evaluation. Even if all these benefits are remarkable, the most valuable benefit of the new procedure was the reduction of the police officers mistakes during the manual operations of survey and data evaluation. Because of these benefits, the satisfaction questionnaires administrated to the police officers after the testing phase showed very good acceptance of the procedure

Using the ISO/IEC 9126 product quality model to classify defects : a Controlled Experiment

Background: Existing software defect classification schemes support multiple tasks, such as root cause analysis and process improvement guidance. However, existing schemes do not assist in assigning defects to a broad range of high level software goals, such as software quality characteristics like functionality, maintainability, and usability. Aim: We investigate whether a classification based on the ISO/IEC 9126 software product quality model is reliable and useful to link defects to quality aspects impacted. Method: Six different subjects, divided in two groups with respect to their expertise, classified 78 defects from an industrial web application using the ISO/IEC 9126 quality main characteristics and sub-characteristics, and a set of proposed extended guidelines. Results: The ISO/IEC 9126 model is reasonably reliable when used to classify defects, even using incomplete defect reports. Reliability and variability is better for the six high level main characteristics of the model than for the 22 sub- characteristics. Conclusions: The ISO/IEC 9126 software quality model provides a solid foundation for defect classification. We also recommend, based on the follow up qualitative analysis performed, to use more complete defect reports and tailor the quality model to the context of us

Quality and representativity of the traffic accident data in urban areas: State of the Art

The reduction of the number of road accident fatalities by 50 %, by the year 2010, suggested by the EU, involves the active contribution of all the agents in charge of the road safety in Europe. Even though the accidents that happened in urban areas have a relative smaller severity, it is the place where, for the moment, in absolute terms, the major number of accidents take place in the EU countries, as well as generating serious consequences on the more vulnerable users (pedestrians, cyclists, children, the elderly…). The current action has as main objective the creation, validation, discussion and spreading, at European level, of the ‘best practices’ for the collection, processing and analysis of traffic accident (TA) data in urban areas. The foreseen final result fundamentally consists in the disposal of a European guide of advices or of “best practices” in order to implement / improve the traffic accident collection, analysis and monitoring systems in urban areas. For that, a compilation of the current “best practices” and on the exchange of experiences between municipalities from several EU countries will be counted on, added to the practical pilot experience that will be carried out as part of this project in several Spanish cities. With the spreading of this guide, the purpose is to contribute to the development of local tools in order to help giving answers and solutions, with more reliable and accurate knowledge, to the problematic of the accident rate in each municipality. The concrete actions that are developed in the project are the following ones: 1) Bibliographical revision and summary of the “state of the art” on the problem of underreporting, the quality, management and analysis / exploitation of TA data in urban area. 2) Development of an in-depth “case study” and application and evaluation of the best practices in some Spanish municipalities from different sizes. D1.1 [8] 3) Execution of a survey study with the objective of getting an approximation to the current situation and practice from a representative sample of European cities from different sizes. 4) Organization of a workshop where the results will be discussed, after the fulfilment of the previously exposed objectives. From all the information obtained from the previous stages, writing and spreading of the Guide of Best Practices throughout the EU. The document that is delivered hereafter is the Deliverable I: Quality and representativity of the traffic accident data in urban area: State of the art. In this stage, as it has been pointed out in the project statement, it is expected, through a bibliographical and documentary revision and summary, to get a general perspective of the state of the accident rate urban records in terms of data collection and information quality, as well as the rules in force in relation to the accident rate collection systems at the European level. The results obtained in this first stage mean a starting point on which the next stages of the SAU study will be developed

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India