Crash cost estimates for European countries, deliverable 3.2 of the H2020 project SafetyCube

Crash cost estimates for European countries, deliverable 3.2 of the H2020 project SafetyCub

Preliminary guidelines for priority setting between measures, Deliverable 3.4 of the H2020 project SafetyCube (Safety CaUsation, Benefits and Efficiency).

The present deliverable describes the economic assessment of counter measures. Cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-utility analysis are compared to cost-benefit analysis. Cost-effectiveness analysis helps to estimate the costs per prevented fatality or injury. To evaluate the effectiveness in terms of different levels of severity jointly, one has to conduct a cost-utility analysis, where fatality reduction and injury reduction are brought together on a joint scale: quality adjusted live years (QALY) saved. QALYs represent the years of life lost due to fatalities and the quality of life loss resulting from injuries. Cost-benefit analysis also allows the joint evaluation of measures’ effectiveness in reducing crashes of different severity. Moreover it provides information on the socio-economic return of counter measures, and in principle allows to include side-effects into the analysis. The valuation of other possible impacts of road safety measures is beyond the scope of SafetyCube, but presentation in terms of cost-benefit ratios allows for the post hoc inclusion of other impacts if DSS users have estimates of these. In the discussion of decision criteria within cost-benefit analysis it is demonstrated that measures with a high cost-benefit ratio (benefits/costs) do not necessarily have a large net-effect (benefits — costs). The net-present value will favour measures with large benefits even if they come at a relatively large cost, while the cost benefit ratio will favour measures with the best value for money, even if their actual benefits are relatively small (e.g., because they are targeted at a small group of crashes). The meaning of costs in the framework of economic welfare theory (the basis of cost-benefit analysis) is not necessarily the same as in everyday language. In this context concepts like opportunity costs and discounting are discussed. Opportunity costs (the value of things you could have done with the money or resources otherwise) are usually approximated by the market price. The exception are costs that are payed from tax-money, which are brought into cost benefit analysis at a higher rate. Discounting is used to bring costs made at different points in time to the same present value. There is a relation between the discount rate and a preference for short-term vs. long term projects. For the estimation of the cost of measures, different components and data sources for these costs are discussed with examples from infrastructure and vehicle measures. Furthermore, the report presents an overview and classification of crash costs components and estimation methods. One of the biggest components are the human costs. These are an indication of how much the prevention of crashes is worth for us (the people), which is measured by the willingness to pay method. Other costs are estimated by the restitution method (what are the costs to compensate the damage done) and the human capital approach (how much benefit would the victim have produced). The information on economic efficiency assessment will be integrated into the SafetyCube Decision support system by means of a cost-benefit calculator that is based on the costs of measures collected in the analysis work packages (WP4, 5, 6) and costs of crashes collected in WP3. (Author/publisher

Developing Safe System Projects in Africa

When dealing with road safety in Africa, one should bear in mind that road safety problems in Africa must be seen in their own context as the solutions proposed to address them. While it is relevant to take into account international good practices, African stakeholders should become owners of the interventions addressing their problems and take the responsibility for developing and implementing the appropriate solutions, taking advantage of suitable technical assistance, if needed. Based on these considerations, in this paper a presentation is made of the process used in the European research project "SaferAfrica - Innovating dialogue and problems appraisal for a safer Africa" to develop Safe System road safety intervention proposals for Africa. SaferAfrica aims at supporting policy makers and stakeholders with evidence on critical risk factors, related actions and good practices drawn from high quality data and knowledge. This project also serves as a platform to foster effective cooperation in road safety and to propose possible next road safety steps and identify possible funding sources in those countries were capacity review is carried out. In the project, road safety and traffic management capacity reviews at the country level were carried out in four countries (Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Tunisia and Kenya), following the World Bank guidelines. After conducting such a capacity review, these guidelines recommend the preparation and implementation of Safe System projects, “stand-alone, multisector initiatives targeting high-risk corridors and areas, with outcomes large enough to be reliably measured.” In SaferAfrica, this approach aims at facilitating the implementation of Safe System projects in the considered countries, by identifying detailed short-term improvement plans, and producing contextualized Terms of Reference for a number of interventions per selected country. These interventions are remedial in nature, they address high-priority concerns and demonstrate the viability of high potential gains within current administrative and legislative frameworks. In order to design interventions suitable to the existing context, a transferability assessment tool is adopted within a “participative” process, involving all possible interested parties, from the institutions to NGOs. The tool will indicate which immediate enabling actions are required to overcome legislative, regulatory, organisational, institutional and other barriers that may prevent measures or actions from being implemented. Results from the process are presented and discussed

Defining suitable Safe System Projects in Africa

When dealing with road safety in Africa, one should bear in mind that road safety problems in Africa must be seen in their own context as the solutions proposed to address them. While it is relevant to take into account international good practices, African stakeholders should become owners of the interventions addressing their problems and take the responsibility for developing and implementing the appropriate solutions, taking advantage of suitable technical assistance, if needed. Based on these considerations, in this paper a presentation is made of the process used in the European research project SaferAfrica to define suitable Safe System projects in Africa. SaferAfrica aims at supporting policy makers and stakeholders with evidence on critical risk factors, related actions and good practices drawn from high quality data and knowledge. In the project, road safety and traffic management capacity reviews at the country level were carried out in five countries (Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Kenya, and South Africa), following the World Bank guidelines. After conducting such a capacity review, these guidelines recommend the preparation and implementation of Safe System projects, “stand-alone, multisector initiatives targeting high-risk corridors and areas, with outcomes large enough to be reliably measured.” In SaferAfrica, this approach aims at facilitating the implementation of Safe System projects in the considered countries, by identifying detailed short-term improvement plans, and producing contextualized Terms of Reference for a number of interventions per selected country. These interventions are remedial in nature, they address high-priority concerns and demonstrate the viability of high potential gains within current administrative and legislative frameworks. In order to design interventions suitable to the existing context, the SaferAfrica transferability audit was adopted within a “participative” process, involving all possible interested parties, from the institutions to NGOs. Results from the process are presented and discussed

Mapping inversion domain boundaries along single GaN wires with Bragg coherent X-ray imaging

International audienceGallium nitride (GaN) is of technological importance for a wide variety of optoelectronic applications. Defects in GaN, like inversion domain boundaries (IDBs), significantly affect the electrical and optical properties of the material. We report, here, on the structural configurations of planar inversion domain boundaries inside n-doped GaN wires measured by Bragg coherent X-ray diffraction imaging. Different complex domain configurations are revealed along the wires with a 9 nm in-plane spatial resolution. We demonstrate that the IDBs change their direction of propagation along the wires, promoting Ga-terminated domains and stabilizing into {11̅00}, that is, m-planes. The atomic phase shift between the Ga- and N-terminated domains was extracted using phase-retrieval algorithms, revealing an evolution of the out-of-plane displacement (∼5 pm, at maximum) between inversion domains along the wires. This work provides an accurate inner view of planar defects inside small crystals