Route planning with a difference

Trip Risk is a route-planning map for Melbourne, Australia which displays the accident black spots along suggested routes. The crash markers are sized according to the total number of incidents at each location. A click on the crash marker reveals information on the number of crashes at a location and the total number of people involved in those crashes. A red dot signifies a crash that involved a fatality. The results displayed on the map can be filtered by speed and by accident type.

This application is a great example of innovation fostered by unrestricted access to data and free open source tools and services. In particular, historical crash data, dating from July 2007 to June 2012, were released under the Victorian Government Open Data initiative (unfortunately, equivalent information is not available for any other State).  The developers used Leaflet map for interactive display of information, MapQuest for route calculations, Nokia for geocoding accident locations, Mapbox for serving base map tiles and the crash data is stored and served by CartoDB.

It would be really neat if, in addition to all the detailed information about individual accidents, it would be possible to calculate a summary score – kind of a “danger index”, for a particular route to indicate how risky it is in comparison to some “average route”. Even better, if several alternatives with lower scores could be suggested as well.


First spotted on Google Maps Mania