Evaluation and comparison of administrative division-level road traffic safety indices of Egypt, England, Turkey, and the United States.

INTRODUCTION: There is regional diversity inside countries regarding road safety indices (RSIs), and countries rarely have been compared based on these indicators. Thus, regional RSIs of England, the United States, Egypt, and Turkey were evaluated. Regional data were collected from the statistical center of each country. The adopted regional RSIs include road fatalities, health risk (HR) or fatalities per population, and traffic risk (TR) or fatalities per number of vehicles. The associations between variables were examined using correlation and regression analysis. The spatial distributions of subdivisions were evaluated using Moran's I, the local Moran index. RESULTS: Considerable differences between the countries were observed, including differences in the spatial distribution of regions and associations between RSIs. Significant relationships were detected between road fatality, population, and the number of motor vehicles. Higher exposure rates mean higher fatalities in regions. A robust linear relationship between the HR and TR indices was identified in developed countries. There is a nonlinear and significant association between motorization rates and TR indices of regions, and fatality risk decreases as the motorization rate increases. There is a considerable gap between developed and developing countries regarding regional RSIs, and the transferability of road safety models from one country to another is challenging. Huge hotspots regarding RSIs were observed in Turkey and the United States. The locations of hot spots in terms of the risk indices were identical in the developed countries.

SWSCAV: Real-time traffic management using connected autonomous vehicles.

Traffic management methods aim to increase the infrastructure's capacity to lower congestion levels. Using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity technologies, connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to operate as actuators for traffic control. In this study, a CAV-based alternative approach for traffic management is proposed (SWSCAV), and its performance is compared to that of lane control signals (LCS) and variable speed limits (VSL), which are also traffic management systems. When a shockwave is detected due to an incident, the CAVs on the road slow until they reach the speed of the observed shockwave (SWS), according to this proposed procedure. Thus, the incoming traffic flow towards the incident is slowed, preventing the queue behind from extending. In a simulation of the urban mobility (SUMO) environment, the suggested method is evaluated for 4800 scenarios on a three-lane highway by varying the market penetration rate of CAVs in traffic flow, the control distances, the incident lane, and the duration. The proposed method reduces the incidence of density values of over 38 veh/km/lane and 28 veh/km/lane in the vicinity of the incident region by 12.68 and 8.15 percent, respectively. Even at low CAV market penetration rates, the suggested method reduces traffic density throughout the network and in the location of the incident site by twice as much as the LCS system application.

Prioritization of healthcare systems during pandemics using Cronbach's measure based fuzzy WASPAS approach.

Pandemics are well-known as epidemics that spread globally and cause many illnesses and mortality. Because of globalization, the accelerated occurrence and circulation of new microbes, the infection has emerged and the incidence and movement of new microbes have sped up. Using technological devices to minimize the visit durations, specifying days for handling chronic diseases, subsidy for the staff are the alternatives that can help prevent healthcare systems from collapsing during pandemics. The study aims to define the efficient usage of optimization tools during pandemics to prevent healthcare systems from collapsing. In this study, a new integrated framework with fuzzy information is developed, which attempts to prioritize these alternatives for policymakers. First, rating data are assigned respective fuzzy values using the standard singleton grades. Later, criteria weights are determined by extending Cronbach´s measure to fuzzy context. The measure not only understands data consistency comprehensively, but also takes into consideration the attitudinal characteristics of experts. By this approach, a rational weight vector is obtained for decision-making. Further, an improved Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) algorithm is put forward for ranking alternatives, which is flexibly considering criteria along with personalized ordering and holistic ordering alternatives. The usefulness of the developed framework is tested with the help of a real case study. Rank values of alternatives when unbiased weights are used is given by 0.741, 0.582, 0.640 with ordering as R 1 ≻ R 3 ≻ R 2 . The sensitivity/comparative analysis reveals the impact of the proposed model as useful in selecting the best alternative for the healthcare systems during pandemics.

Spatial analysis and evaluation of road traffic safety performance indexes across the provinces of Turkey from 2015 to 2019.

Limited road safety based spatial analysis studies have been conducted in developing countries. Also, little is known about the relationships between province-level road safety performance indexes (RSPIs). Hence, spatial, regression and correlation analysis were used to identify road safety-deficient provinces and determine the relationship between RSPIs. The gathered data comprise 14 RSPIs and nine socioeconomic indicators. Moran's I and Local Moran indexes were used for conducting the spatial analysis. The natural breaks method was used to cluster similar provinces according to RSPIs. Regarding studied RSPIs, huge local clusters of provinces detected. Eastern provinces had higher road traffic crash (RTC) severity indexes. RTCs were more severe in regions with lower income level. Regions with higher socioeconomic indexes such as population had higher RTC rates. Using RSPIs calculated with distinct exposure measures creates completely different local cluster maps. significant relationships between studied RSPIs were detected. A standard system is needed to organize and categorize the RSPIs. Road safety policies should be region-specific to reduce RSPIs efficiently. Regarding the observed various locations of hot spots in terms of studied RSPIs, further consideration should be given in the process of selecting an RSPI for comparing administrative divisions of a country.

Matching algorithm for improving ride-sharing by incorporating route splits and social factors.

Increasing traffic congestion and the advancements in technology have fostered the growth of alternative transportation modes such as dynamic ride-sharing. Smartphone technologies have enabled dynamic ride-sharing to thrive, as this type of transportation aims to establish ride matches between people with similar routes and schedules on short notice. Many automated matching methods are designed to improve system performance; such methods include minimizing process time, minimizing total system cost or maximizing total distance savings. However, the results may not provide the maximum benefits for the participants. This paper intends to develop an algorithm for optimizing matches when considering participants' gender, age, employment status and social tendencies. The proposed matching algorithm also splits unmatched parts of drivers' routes and creates new travel requests to find additional matches using these unmatched parts. Accordingly, this paper performs an extensive simulation study to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm. The simulation results indicate that route splits may increase the number of matches significantly when there is a shortage of drivers. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates the effects and potential benefits of utilizing a social compatibility score in the objective function.