GLM-Based Flexible Monitoring Methods: An Application to Real-Time Highway Safety Surveillance

Abstract

Statistical modeling of historical crash data can provide essential insights to safety managers for proactive highway safety management. While numerous studies have contributed to the advancement from the statistical methodological front, minimal research efforts have been dedicated to real-time monitoring of highway safety situations. This study advocates the use of statistical monitoring methods for real-time highway safety surveillance using three years of crash data for rural highways in Saudi Arabia. First, three well-known count data models (Poisson, negative binomial, and Conway–Maxwell–Poisson) are applied to identify the best fit model for the number of crashes. Conway–Maxwell–Poisson was identified as the best fit model, which was used to find the significant explanatory variables for the number of crashes. The results revealed that the road type and road surface conditions significantly contribute to the number of crashes. From the perspective of real-time highway safety monitoring, generalized linear model (GLM)-based exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and cumulative sum (CUSUM) control charts are proposed using the randomized quantile residuals and deviance residuals of Conway–Maxwell (COM)–Poisson regression. A detailed simulation-based study is designed for predictive performance evaluation of the proposed control charts with existing counterparts (i.e., Shewhart charts) in terms of the run-length properties. The study results showed that the EWMA type control charts have better detection ability compared with the CUSUM type and Shewhart control charts under small and/or moderate shift sizes. Finally, the proposed monitoring methods are successfully implemented on actual traffic crash data to highlight the efficacy of the proposed methods. The outcome of this study could provide the analysts with insights to plan sound policy recommendations for achieving desired safety goals.