Graduation Year

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Granting Department

Environmental Science and Policy

Major Professor

Paul Zandbergen, Ph.D

Co-Major Professor

L. Donald Duke, Ph.D

Committee Member

Jayajit Chakraborty, Ph.D

Keywords

GIS, Hillsborough, Land use, Negative binomial, Traffic safety

Abstract

Improving traffic safety for pedestrians is an urgent task for the Hillsborough County. The objective of this research is to understand the contributing factors that cause pedestrian accidents in Hillsborough County in the State of Florida. Specifically, this research attempts to determine the effects of demographic, land use, roadway and traffic volume factors on the number of pedestrian accidents. Five hypotheses were proposed to examine these factors. GIS was used to perform spatial analysis. Based on pedestrian accident records from 1999 to 2001, accident density map was created using Kernel density method. The value of the accident density was assigned to each census block group, and this value formed a dependent variable of the model. Accident models were developed using negative binomial regression to model the relationship between contributing factors and pedestrian accidents.

The results showed that commercial and service land use, residential land use, and the density of state roadways increase the number of pedestrian accidents. It was also found that average household income and the percentage of elderly residents lower the number of pedestrian accidents. The percentage of child residents did not show a statistically significant result. The effect of traffic volume was not determined because of data limitations. It should be explored in future research.

Download

Share

COinS