الملخص الإنجليزي
Oman has one of the highest global fatality rates due to road accidents with 30.4
fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants most of them occurred in its capital city Muscat
(WHO, 2013). Since 2000, the planning and safety authorities in the country have taken
different safety measures but the improvement is not yet apparent. One reason for this
could be the lack of knowledge in terms of spatial and temporal distribution of car
accidents in the country. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) provides advanced
spatial analyses capabilities that could fill that gap and lead to much more efficient
mitigation strategies. In order to demonstrate this, general data sets of Muscat accidents
at a national scale from 2013 – 2015 have been analyzed using GIS and some patterns
were spotted. Muscat, the capital of Oman, and it is divided to six wards.
It became apparent that the analytical options available for the Muscat datasets are
currently limited. To highlight this in more detail, road accident data from Portsmouth
containing 2600 records from 2013 – 2015 was also analyzed. Unlike the Muscat
dataset, each of these records contains the geographic location, i.e. Easting and
Northing, along with other non-spatial data. It became clear that having such positional
accuracy allows GIS to analyses the data spatially using a variety of tools. For instance,
it was possible to identify hot spots and map evening rush hour distributions of
accidents. This would have not been possible without the availability of detailed and
accurate data and the use of GIS technology. Such awareness should give safety and
traffic authorities a platform to implement the correct precautionary provisions and
measures to enhance road safety. Therefore, the study advises concerned authorities in
Muscat to consider capturing accurate location of accidents and to study the viability
of GIS as a cooperative platform for road safety initiatives in the city.
