Proposal and Validation of a Model for Predicting Number of Injuries Due to Road Accidents in Casablanca City

Abstract

Despite the efforts made by the National Committee for the Prevention of Traffic Accidents to reduce the number of road accidents, it must be noted that the reported figures are constantly increasing. Available figures show that the number of road accidents increased by 19% between 2012 and 2016 from 65461 to 80680, and the resulting injuries rose from 102350 in 2012 to 119162 in 2016 or 17%. These figures prove the limits of the undertaken plans and express the need for further innovative action for addressing the root causes of road accidents and to remedy their consequences. This paper focuses on the downstream part of road accidents management, the purpose of which is to propose, evaluate and validate an ARIMA model to forecast the number of injuries in road accidents. The objective is to provide hospital decision-makers with a model that makes it possible to forecast the number of injuries from road accidents in order to take the necessary measures to receive and treat victims by the city’s hospital network. The case study presented in this paper is based on monthly statistics on road accidents that occurred in Casablanca city between 2010 and 2016. Statistics from 2017 were used to test and validate the model. Results show that time series analysis can be a useful tool for short-term demand forecasting (predicting the number of victim arrivals) for planning and sizing hospital emergency departments. This would undeniably save the lives of a significant number of injured victims.