The role of data visualization and analytics of highway accidents

Abstract

Thailand has been ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in terms of death from road accidents, representing ineffective road safety policies. The crucial mission of the Thai government is to provide safety and reduce accidents for road users on the highway system. This paper aims to explore the potential of using Business Intelligence (BI) in accident analysis. The availability of open accident data provides an opportunity for the BI, which can provide an advanced platform for conducting data visualization and analytics in both spatial and temporal dimensions in order to illustrate when and where the accidents occur. The accident data and provincial data were combined by using the Talend Data Integration tool. The combined data was then loaded into a MySQL database for data visualization using Tableau. The dashboard was designed and created by using Tableau as an analytical visualization tool to provide insights into highway accidents. This system is advised to be adopted by the Thai government, which can be used for data visualization and analytics to provide a mechanism to formulate strategy options and formulate appropriate contingency plans to improve the accident situation.