Enhanced Analysis of Work Zone Safety Through Integration of Statewide Crash Data with Lane Closure System Data

Effective work zone safety analysis requires consideration of a variety of data sources including the frequency of crashes in and around a work zone, driver and environmental factors, and work zone characteristics. Fundamental to this analysis is the ability to match crashes to work zones. The traditional approach in Wisconsin, as in many states, has relied on a construction zone flag in the police crash report and targeted work zone studies. The crash report provides a macroscopic level of work zone crashes but does not provide details about the work zones themselves, except when noted in the officer’s narrative description. Targeted work zone studies provide a wealth of information for specific work zones, but are limited in number and scope.

The Wisconsin Lane Closure System (WisLCS), a centralized scheduling and reporting system for highway lane closures statewide, provides a new opportunity to match crashes to specific work zones on a system-wide level. This paper investigates the ability to match hand-mapped highway crashes from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) to WisLCS lane closure records. The underlying methodology is based on the WisDOT State Trunk Network (STN) linear referencing system, which provides a common GIS network for both data sets. A preliminary analysis of work zone safety based on WisLCS closure attributes is presented. Although the methodology introduced is specific to these two databases, the general ideas can be applied to any similar sets of crash and work zone systems.