DEVELOPMENT OF A RURAL ROAD SAFETY AUDIT EXPERT SYSTEM (RRSAES)

Abstract

Road Safety Audit (RSA) is a proactive strategy that aims at treating the cause of traffic-accidents through a formalized examination of existing or future road projects in view of traffic safety principles. Expert system is a promising technique that can turn complex interpretation of auditing examination into simplified and friendly used procedures using power and storage capabilities of computers.This research aims at developing an expert system that can serve as a diagnosis knowledge-based system of traffic-safety condition at rural roads due to the principles of RSA. The expert system deals with the database of safety auditing examination according to checklists extracted from the program of RSA for rural roads in Iraq. The input data is coded in the environment of Microsoft Visual Basic 6, which is tightly integrated with Windows-Me operating system. The developed expert system nominated as Rural Road Safety Audit Expert System (RRSAES) enables auditors to optimize their outputs and maximize the safety benefits of RSA. After interactions with user (auditor) in the auditing course, the system displays the road safety audit indices that indicate the safety condition of road design elements at the audited site.