Estimation of vehicle damage cost involved in Road Traffic Accidents in Karachi, Pakistan: A Geospatial Perspective

Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) are serious but ignored problem in Pakistan. Now this problem is under limelight due to disastrous impacts over society in general and over economy in particular. Karachi is considered to be the most income generating city of Pakistan. This city holds a typical feature of most road traffic accidents facing in the country and the fourth highest RTA fatalities in the world. More than 26,000 road accidents occur on the arteries of Karachi every year making it a worrisome place. Outcome of RTAs could be measured in tangible manner i.e., in term of number of life loss but intangible losses are very difficult to measure. In this paper an attempt has been made to capture the potential flaws in road geometry through Remote Sensing and embedding the land use data through the inventory of Geographic Information Systems. Moreover, overlay analysis techniques helps in identifying the high accident cost areas. In Karachi, over 35,000 vehicles are involved in crashes every year, resulting in loss of life as well as wealth. The overall repair cost over the vehicles involved in all types of RTAs in year2012 is more than 20,000,000 PKR with Landhi Town showing the highest cost. Shah Faisal Town showed the minimum repair cost of over 300,000 due to its small aerial extent and lesser number of economic land use making it a safer place for vehicle users. Moreover, map of Karachi showing the spatial pattern of vehicle repair cost. It is suggested that the serious measures need to be undertaken to combat this problem. (C) 2014 Published Elsevier Ltd.