Geographic information system-based accident data management for Mexican federal roads

A description is given of the efforts of the Mexican Transportation Institute (IMT) to develop a geographic information system (GIS)-based data management system for accidents on federal roads in the various states of Mexico with the purpose of achieving efficiency, reliability, and automation for handling and processing of such data. A description is also given of the use of the developed system for generating some relevant results. Some conclusions are derived. Although the former is shown only for the case of the state of Oaxaca, the procedure presented has been completed for the other states of Mexico. For development of this work, the ArcView GIS was selected after evaluating its characteristics of capacity versus price, because the resulting system will be delivered to each of the Centers of the Ministry of Communications and Transports in the states of Mexico. The system is developed by integrating into ArcView a series of data for the state considered, including cartographic representation, classification and naming of roads, traffic volume and composition, and information on accidents. The information referred to in the work corresponds to 1997.