Export expansion in the People's Republic of China since 1978: A case study of the Pearl River Delta

Against the background of a complex and evolving statistical system, this article addresses three crucial issues in the understanding of the rapid export expansion of China in general and the Pearl River Delta in particular. First, the export orientation of the Pearl River Delta is critically assessed. The gradual emergence of export-oriented firms in the region and their spatial clustering around Hong Kong are highlighted. Secondly, the structural dimension of export expansion in the region is examined. Foreign-invested enterprises were found to be the "engine of growth." Lastly, an analysis of the spatial dimension of the foreign-invested enterprises' export component reveals that the juridical status and geographical locations of exporting firms are complementary in providing a better understanding of export expansion in China since 1978. © The China Quarterly, 2004.published_or_final_versio

Safety in numbers for cyclists beyond national-level and city-level data: a study on the non-linearity of risk within the city of Hong Kong

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Factors affecting the likelihood of reporting road crashes resulting in medical treatment to the police

Objective: This paper aims to determine the percentage of road crashes resulting in injuries requiring hospital care that are reported to the police and to identify factors associated with reporting such crashes to the police. Design: The data of one of two hospitals in the Road Casualty Information System were matched with the police's Traffic Accident Database System. Factors affecting the police-reporting rate were examined at two levels: the different reporting rates among subgroups examined and tested with χ2 tests; and multiple explanatory factors were scrutinised with a logistic regression model to arrive at the odds ratios to reflect the probability of police-reporting among subgroups. Results: The police-reporting rate was estimated to be 57.5-59.9%. In particular, under-reporting among children (reporting rate = 33.6%) and cyclists (reporting rate = 33.0%) was notable. Discussion: Accurate and reliable road crash data are essential for unveiling the full-scale and nature of the road safety problem. The police crash database needs to be supplemented by other data. In particular, any estimation about the social costs of road crashes must recognise the under-reporting problem. The large number of injuries not reflected in the police crash database represents a major public health issue that should be carefully examined.published_or_final_versio

Age as a Risk Factor in Pedestrian Traffic Casualties

This paper makes use of a linked hospital database, the Road Casualty Information System (RoCIS), to examine age as a risk factor in pedestrian traffic casualties. The database consisted of 4,290 traffic casualty records admitted to two major hospitals in Hong Kong in 2004. Among these records, there were 897 pedestrian traffic casualties (PTC) and 3,367 non-pedestrian traffic casualties (NPTC). Statistically, there was no significant age difference among the two groups. However, the severity of injury differed significantly at the 0.05 level. In order to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the age factor in affecting the severity of injuries, the pedestrian traffic casualties were divided into four age groups. A set of five injury severity variables were calculated for different age groups. For PTC, all injury severity indicators increased by age. The picture was less clear for NPTC. Theoretically, there are many confounding factors, such as gender, vehicle class and injury patterns, to injury severity. The relationships of these risk factors with the five injury severity variables are analyzed by logistic regression. Overall, the results clearly point to the importance of age as a risk factor. In all models, the elderly (≥65 years) were having higher chances of serious injury and fatality. The odd ratios imply that elderly PTC were about twice more likely to die and to suffer from serious injury than younger ones. In addition, multiple injuries and heavy vehicles also increased the chance of severe injury among PTC.published_or_final_versio

Identification of Hazardous Road Locations for Pedestrians

AbstractHot zone methodology is promising in the identification of hazardous road locations. The key steps involve geo-validation of road crashes, segmentation of road network into basic spatial units (BSUs), calculation of actual crash intensity, definition of threshold value, and examination of spatial proximity of BSUs. This research applies the hot zone methodology to identify dangerous road locations for pedestrians during the study period of 2005 to 2007 in Kwun Tong District of Hong Kong. In particular, the crash intensity was calculated by a casualty-weighted method, which assigns different weights to different injury severity types. Two negative binomial regression models were employed to determine the threshold values. One could be treated as a base model which includes the length of BSU as the only explanatory variable. The other, regarded as a full model, introduces diverse environmental variables that might have influenced the distribution of pedestrian casualties

Determinants of Children's Independent Mobility in Hong Kong

The paper can be viewed at http://easts.info/on-line/proceedings/vol9/PDF/P3.pdfConference Theme: Towards a Harmonized Transportation SocietyThis study examines children’s independent mobility (CIM) among primary school students during their home-school journeys in Hong Kong. It represents an empirical research to assess the impact of individual, family and environmental determinants in influencing the level of CIM. Using territory-wide travel diary data from the Travel Characteristic Survey 2002 (TCS02), logistic regression modeling is used to understand the key factors associated with increased level of CIM among children in the city. The present study found that approximately one third of school journeys were conducted by children on their own. CIM were highly associated with the distance to schools, age group of children, median household income, family structure, working status of mothers, employment of domestic helper, neighborhood settlement types and density of school places. These findings can provide input to strategies for promoting increased level of CIM to improve children’s well-being

Spatial point analysis of road crashes in Shanghai: A GIS-based network kernel density method

As road crashes are constrained to a one-dimensional space, this paper analyzes the spatial distribution of road crashes with a GIS-based network-constrained kernel density method. A dissolving procedure is introduced before road segmentation, which can significantly reduce the undesirable effects during the segmentation process. The result of the sensitivity analysis reflects that the bandwidth imposes great impacts on the spatial distribution of density estimates. Different bandwidths may be considered for different types of traffic crashes. In particular, vehicle-pedestrian crashes in downtown areas tend to be highly localized and a narrower bandwidth is more appropriate. Vehicle-vehicle crashes at the suburb and rural areas, however, tend to happen in a less concentrated manner along a continuous stretch of dangerous road segments; and a wider bandwidth is more powerful in identifying these hot zones. Based on our results, administrations can gain more information on hazardous road locations, conduct investigations and propose improvement measures. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 19th International Conference on GeoInformatics, Shanghai, China, 24-26 June 2011. In Proceedings of 19th GeoInformatics, 2011, p. 1-

The rural-urban divide in road safety: the case of China

Mainland China accounted for about 7% of the global road fatalities in 2008. Road crashes happening on Chinese roads were deadly. On average, one person died in every four reported traffic crashes. Despite the scarcity of data, substantial rural-urban differences were found. In the rural areas, higher-order Highways, roads with no lighting and some heavy vehicles warrant particular attention from road safety administrations. In the 2000s, the average number of road fatalities per 100 crashes on Expressways quadrupled. Furthermore, the rural-urban divide was not limited to inner provinces only but was found in a large part of the country. By 2008, nearly 70% of the provincial units were having larger shares of rural population. In the long term, only a national road safety strategy will provide the necessary holistic framework for addressing the road safety problems in China systematically.published_or_final_versio

Choice or rank data in stated preference surveys?

Should researchers collect choice or rank data in stated preference (SP) surveys? Answer to this question can have significant implications on survey costs and modeling outputs available for policy analysis. In particular, the exploded rank multinomial logit model (MNL) is compared with the ordinary choice-based MNL model. Using the empirical SP rank data collected among the public light bus operators in Hong Kong, the selected modeling approaches are compared in terms of model assumptions, model fit, modeling outputs and policy implications. Besides, the reliability of the exploded rank data is tested. The mixed results suggest that extra care must be exercised in the design of SP ranking tasks.published_or_final_versio

Severity of pedestrian injuries due to traffic crashes at signalized intersections in Hong Kong: a Bayesian spatial logit model

The present study intended to (1) investigate the injury risk of pedestrian casualties involved in traffic crashes at signalized intersections in Hong Kong; (2) determine the effect of pedestrian volumes on the severity levels of pedestrian injuries; and (3) explore the role of spatial correlation in econometric crash-severity models. The data from 1889 pedestrian-related crashes at 318 signalized intersections between 2008 and 2012 were elaborately collected from the Traffic Accident Database System maintained by the Hong Kong Transport Department. To account for the cross-intersection heterogeneity, a Bayesian hierarchical logit model with uncorrelated and spatially correlated random effects was developed. An intrinsic conditional autoregressive prior was specified for the spatial correlation term. Results revealed that (1) signalized intersections with greater pedestrian volumes generally exhibited a lower injury risk; (2) ignoring the spatial correlation potentially results in reduced model goodness-of-fit, an underestimation of variability and standard error of parameter estimates, as well as inconsistent, biased, and erroneous inference; (3) special attention should be paid to the following factors, which led to a significantly higher probability of pedestrians being killed or sustaining severe injury: pedestrian age greater than 65 years, casualties with head injuries, crashes that occurred on footpaths that were not obstructed/overcrowded, heedless or inattentive crossing, crashes on the two-way carriageway, and those that occurred near tram or light-rail transit stops. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.postprin