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Good safety and highway inventory data are crucial in today’s processes to make sound safety improvement decisions. They will become even more important, if agencies are to take advantage of a new generation of safety analysis tools, such as the FHWA’s Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) and SafetyAnalyst, AASHTO’s Data and Analysis Guide, and the Highway Safety Manual. Development of a Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements, referred to as MMIRE, is recommended so that State, local, and Federal agencies understand the importance of roadway inventory and traffic data for safety programs and know what critical roadway data variables are required to make more effective and efficient safety improvement decisions, as well as to take advantage of current and future cutting-edge analytical tools and resources.
The establishment and adoption of MMIRE has potential advantages beyond improved safety. State and local asset management systems also will benefit by collecting and monitoring of the MMIRE. Since a major portion of MMIRE will be comprised of an inventory of various roadway assets, asset managers can benefit from standardized definitions, consistent measurement accuracies, and geo-spatial location and performance levels of these assets. This joint effort between safety and asset management can result in shared data, improved interdepartmental cooperation, reductions in data discrepancy, and improved data collection and reliability. The initiative will improve both the overall safety and the asset management programs. Finally, collection of MMIRE in a current asset management system will allow safety practitioners to access that information from the database and reduce the burden on enforcement or investigators to collect the information at the crash scene.
Michael F. Trentacoste
Director, Office of Safety
Research and Development
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1. Report No. FHWA-HRT-07-046 |
2. Government Accession No. | 3. Recipient’s Catalog No. | |
4. Title and Subtitle Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements—MMIRE | 5. Report Date August 2007 | ||
6. Performing Organization Code | |||
7.Author(s) |
8. Performing Organization Report No. | ||
9. Performing Organization Name and Address | 10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS) | ||
11. Contract or Grant No. | |||
12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address Federal Highway Administration | 13. Type of Report and Period Covered Final Report, September 2004— | ||
14. Sponsoring Agency Code | |||
15. Supplementary Notes Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR): Carol Tan, HRDS-06 | |||
16. Abstract Safety data provide the key to making sound decisions on the design and operation of roadways, but deficiencies in many States’ safety databases do not allow for good decisionmaking. The Federal Highway Administration, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program sponsored a scanning study of how agencies in the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia develop and use traffic safety information systems. That scan produced a report that included recommendations for advancing safety themes in the areas of strategy, efficiency, and utility. A recently completed follow-on effort built on the scan team’s final report and draft implementation plan by reviewing in detail the strategies suggested, providing action-related details to some of the critical strategies, and adding new strategies to help reach the team’s goals.(1) As noted in that White Paper, while considerable attention and effort has been devoted to the improvement in crash data, one of the primary safety databases, much less effort has been devoted to improvements in the second primary safety database–roadway inventory and traffic data. One of the five critical strategies detailed there involved improving safety data by defining good inventory data, and specifically recommended the development of a Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Element (MMIRE) that would define the critical inventory and traffic data elements needed by State and local jurisdictions to meet current safety analysis needs and data needs arising from a new generation of safety analysis tools. This current report presents a proposed MMIRE and documents the development process, which included review of the proposed MMIRE elements in a workshop of safety data experts. A listing of high-priority and supplemental inventory and traffic elements are presented, along with proposed coding for each element. | |||
17. Key Words | 18. Distribution Statement | ||
19. Security Classif. (of this report) Unclassified | 20. Security Classif. (of this page) Unclassified | 21. No. of Pages 81 | 22. Price |
Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) | Reproduction of completed page authorized.(art. 5/94) |
DEFINITION OF AND RATIONALE FOR MMIRE
DEVELOPMENT OF MMIRE
Identification of potential MMIRE elements
The MMIRE Review Workshop
Modification of DRAFT MMIRE element listing
Development of proposed coding scheme for each MMIRE element
PROPOSED MMIRE ELEMENTS AND CODES
Proposed MMIRE Elements
Proposed MMIRE Element Coding
Additional safety variables in the National Bridge Index and USDOT National Highway-Rail Crossing Inventory
APPENDIX A. MMIRE WORKSHOP ATTENDEES
APPENDIX B. PROPOSED MMIRE ELEMENTS
APPENDIX C. PROPOSED MMIRE ELEMENT CODING
Table 1. Category and subcategory headings for MMIRE elements
Table 2. High priority safety variables in the National Bridge Inventory
Table 3. High-priority safety variables in the USDOT National Highway Rail Crossing Inventory
AADT | annual average daily traffic |
---|---|
AASHTO | American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials |
ADT | average daily traffic |
AMF | accident modification factor |
DOT | department of transportation |
FHWA | Federal Highway Administration |
FIPS | Federal Information Processing Standards |
GLC | geographic locator code |
GSA | General Services Administration |
HPMS | Highway Performance Monitoring System |
HSIS | Highway Safety Information System |
HSM | Highway Safety Manual |
IHSDM | Interactive Highway Safety Design Model |
ITRF | International Traffic Records Forum |
MMIRE | Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements |
MMUCC | Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria |
NCHRP | National Cooperative Highway Research Program |
NHTSA | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration |
SAFETEA-LU | Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users |
TRB | Transportation Research Board |
TSIMS | Transportation Safety Information Management System |
USDOT | U.S. Department of Transportation |
FHWA-HRT-07-046