Abstract

Spatiotemporal Analysis of Macroscopic Patterns of Urbanization and Traffic Safety
Track: Urban and Regional Planning
Authors: John Bigham

The spatial patterns and relationship between urbanization and traffic collisions were analyzed in Sacramento County, California from 1998 to 2008. The ArcGIS directional distribution tool was used to create standard deviational ellipses to investigate the distributional trend of urban land and traffic collisions over time. Statistical outputs representing changes of geographical centroids, elliptical areas, and standard distances (long and short axes) were then compared. Collisions were also subset by severity level to account for inherent differences in the spatial distribution of different types of collisions. The results provided insight into the macroscopic spatial patterns of urban land and traffic safety and their relationships. The approach in this study would be useful for other metropolitan areas with similarly changing development patterns and can be helpful in guiding future research comparing these two phenomena.