Relationship of environmental factors toward accident cases using GIS application in Kedah

Abstract

Malaysia has been ranked as one of the top three countries in the world with deadliest roads. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between environmental factors and the occurrence of accident cases. The road accident data were obtained from Ibu Pejabat Kontinjen (IPK) Alor Setar and the weather data were obtained from the Malaysian Meteorological Department (MMD) from the year 2013 to 2015. These data were processed through ArcGIS software 10.5. Subsequently, to determine the relationship between accident cases and environmental factors, the regression method was carried out. The result show rainfall has effects toward road accidents at the low level of rainfall. Besides that, there are two levels of temperature that lead to accidents occurring in Kedah such as cool day and warm day. The number of accident cases increased when the temperature value in cool day category increased and the number of road accident cases occurred decreased when the temperature value increased in warm day category. Meanwhile, the number of accident cases increased when the wind speed is maximum or above 20 m/s. In conclusion, the advancements in Geographical Information System (GIS) can be put to effective use in road accidents for further analysis such as spatial-temporal analysis, hotspots area analysis, shortest path analysis and emergency response analysis.