Infrastructure safety intervention management and mitigation of road risk factors

Decision-making processes related to the safety of road traffic system operation may be improved and assessed through their integration in dedicated management systems, such as those specified in Directive 2008/96 / EC of the European Parliament (mandatory in the trans-European network roads) and ISO standard 39001: 2012 (voluntary application). Basically a road safety management system (RSMS) must be adjusted to the context of the performing organization, establish leadership, define overall planning instruments (such as operating indicators, goals, ways to reach the goals and methods to verify this achievement), specify the resources to be affected, set the operational controls and define how to evaluate the results obtained.

In the context of the agencies in charge of road infrastructure operating and of the management of urban public space it is possible to obtain efficiency gains in various components of their respective RSMS, by developing and applying tools integrating mathematical models that represent the relevant inter-relationships between elements of the traffic system, with appropriate degree of simplification.

This research line aims at improving the efficiency of RSMS tools for supporting infrastructure intervention to mitigate crash consequences, by improving the accuracy of adjusted relationships between road environment, traffic, and road user safety, and by laying out the methods for assessing the effects of infrastructure safety interventions.