Formulating a GIS-based geometric design quality assessment model for Mountain highways

Highways play an important role in China's economic development, especially in mountainous regions. In reality, design of mountainous highways can be a challenging task due to complex geological and topographic conditions. From the safety perspective, it is also important that road geometric design defects and potential accident blind spots can be reasonably identified from the design. To this end, this study formulated an innovative Geographic Information System (GIS)-based geometric design quality assessment model for mountain highways. First, a fault tree analysis (FTA) was conducted to identify a series of highway design risk factors. Second, a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique was employed to derive the factors' weight and sensitivity. Third, road driving suitability, traffic safety sensitivity, design risk factors, and effective distance were taken into account to formulate a design quality assessment model. Forth, two case studies based on a mountainous highway located in southwest China were conducted to validate this model. The case studies established that improving geometric design quality can significantly improve the road traffic safety of mountainous highways. It is also revealed that the existence of steep slopes, tunnels, and rapid horizontal and vertical alignment change can considerably compromise the geometric design quality (GDQ), therefore, configuring these parameters is worth of further investigation. Last but not least, this study provides essential knowledge to the regime of accident prevention, high-risk road section location and mapping, traffic safety management, and design of smart transport systems.