This research has been limited in scope due to the constraints in the data that we obtained. For future work, researchers could partner with the University of British Columbia to try and obtain data of where most of the university staff and students live and their mode of transportation. From there, the ones that drive to school can be singled out and an analysis can be performed based on the approximate areas which people commute to campus from. Then the analysis of the least cost path can be improved by using those areas rather areas rather than arbitrarily selecting city points.
Another step to change our analysis process would have been to normalize the ICBC data that was obtained. In our analysis we only added together the number of car crashes and the type of car crash, but it would be interesting to map out the more serious car crashes in an area over the total car crash number in the area. This would, for instance, show intersections with multiple small crashes being less dangerous than an intersection with less crashes that are more severe, informing users to avoid the latter.
Furthermore, the monitoring of accident-prone areas can help to determine how this will increase and/or shift traffic and accidents to other parts of the Greater Vancouver area. Research can also be done on whether the knowledge of the suggested routes might possibly shift the accident locations from their original locations to along the routes suggested as more and more people use these paths.
The research can also be combined with other fields such as environmental impact assessments. Investigations could occur as to whether avoiding these routes impact other areas long term. For instance, if taking these routes cause people to be caught more often in stand-still traffic due to car accidents and this, in turn, affects the amount gasoline consumed and the amount of fuel emitted into the atmosphere.
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