80 Developing the European road safety decision support system

Background The European Road Safety Decision Support System (DSS) is one of the key objectives of the European co-funded research project SafetyCube in order to better support evidence-based policy making. The SafetyCube project results will be assembled in the form of a Decision Support System that will present for each suggested road safety measure: details of the risk factor tackled, the measure itself, the best estimate of casualty reduction effectiveness, the cost-benefit evaluation and the analytic background. While the development and evaluation of the measures will be developed into a format and structure that will enable industry, policy-makers and other stakeholders to access the information in an efficient manner within the DSS. In order to provide policy-makers and industry with comprehensive and well-structured information about measures, it is essential that a systems approach is used to ensure the links between risk factors and all relevant safety measures are made fully visible. The DSS is intended to become a major source of information for industry, policy-makers and the wider road safety community; it will incorporate the knowledge base of accident causation, risks and measures that will be developed in the project and the underlying methodological systems. It will enable a considerable advance in the provision of evidence-based road safety policies. It will be developed in a form that can readily be incorporated within the existing European Road Safety Observatory of the European Commission DG-MOVE. Methods For the development of the European Road Safety Decision Support System a comprehensive common methodology is designed and applied in existing and new studies of road safety measures effectiveness evaluation. The DSS covers all types of road safety interventions, including the road user behaviour, infrastructure, vehicle, as well as road safety management. Results In this paper, the structure and the functioning of the European Road Safety Decision Support System will be presented, together with the first results of the application of the common methodology for the evaluation of road safety measures effectiveness. Conclusions The development of the European Road Safety Decision Support System presents a great potential to further support decision making at local, regional, national and international level, aiming to fill in the current gap of comparable measures effectiveness evaluation across Europe and worldwide.