Evaluation of road safety performance indicators using OWA operators

Abstract

Road safety performance indicators have recently been proposed as a useful instrument in comparing countries on their performance of road safety risk factors. New insights can be gained in case one road safety index is composed of all risk indicators. The safety performance can be evaluated, countries can be ranked, trends identified and the impact of measures assessed. However, the aggregation process is still unclear in this context. In this paper, the use of ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operators will be experimented for an evaluation of road safety performance indicators. More specifically, several basic and more advanced aggregation operators will be applied to our indicator data set and the final index scores are then compared to the number of road fatalities per million inhabitants. It is demonstrated that compensation should not be allowed too much in the road safety context. All indicators should be incorporated in the final index to some extent and weaker performances should be stressed more.