GIS-based Economic Cost Estimation of Traffic Accidents in St. Louis, Missouri

The economic loss due to total traffic accidents in St. Louis remains high every year. This paper presents an effective approach to spatially identifying potential casualty areas and their economic losses. In this study, five years of traffic accident data, from 2007 to 2011, collected in the City of St. Louis and the adjacent counties, is used. Using Geographic Information System (GIS)-based techniques, e. g. Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), two maps are generated and compared: 1) traffic accident rate map based on the number of traffic accidents per year and 2) the economic costs map. The locations with high economic costs but with low accident rates are identified and shown in a 3-D visualization format. The results can be used as a foundation for the traffic accident cost estimation related research and serves as a guideline for practitioners to investigate the areas with high traffic accident severity levels. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.