Identification and Prioritization of Effective Criteria in the Accident-Prone Points’ Prrioritization, using DEMATEL Technique

Concerning the lack of budget to employ safety measures for all of the accident-prone roads, prioritization of accident-prone points helps us to have meaningful measures and investment efficiency increase. Hence, different techniques have been presented, with different methodologies based on their special hypothesizes. Because of the weakness in the establishment of the accident data bank, some of these methods have been channelized to the patterns in which the identification and prioritization process is independent from implementation of inefficient, incorrect and incomplete data. In this paper, it is tried to identify and prioritize the effective criteria in prioritization of accident-prone points including geometrical,physical and traffic characteristics, cost and number of accidents, using road safety experts’ view points and DEMATEL technique. In order to determine the extent of importance and effectiveness of factors to each other, some questionnaires were provided and the experts’ views were recorded. Through coding in MATLAB software, different phases of DEMATEL technique execution were done and the influence arrangement matrix was drafted. The results showed the cost criterion is the most effective factor on the other criteria and the number of accidents is the most impressionable factor from other criteria.