An integrated group best-worst method - Data envelopment analysis approach for evaluating road safety: A case of Iran

Evaluating road safety is an important issue for policy makers. One of the most important model for evaluation of road safety is data envelopment analysis-based road safety (DEA-RS). Conventional DEA-RS model is unable to consider decision makers' (DMs) judgements in the evaluations and also suffers from weight flexibility of input and output variables. In this paper, to incorporate DMs' preferences into decision making process and overcome the weight flexibility shortcoming of DEA-RS model, DEA-RS is combined with group best-worst method (BWM). For considering the preferences, a group BWM is proposed. The proposed model is applied to estimate the road safety efficiency in provinces of Iran. The results show that developed provinces such as Tehran has the safest roads in Iran. In contrast, provinces with poor road facilities are unsafe provinces in roads. At last, to improve the road safety performances, managerial implications and recommendations have been made for policy makers. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.