In British Columbia, driving is regulated by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), which was established in 1973 as a provincial Crown corporation. Since all vehicles are must be registered to legally be parked or driven on public streets in British Columbia, ICBC handles motorist insurance, vehicle licensing and registration, driver licensing, and produces annual traffic reports, statistics and crash maps.
The project, Safest Driving Routes from UBC to Areas Around the Greater Vancouver Regional District, was derived from our interest in finding the safest route from the University of British Columbia (UBC) to residential areas in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). As driving is an important skill for most students and faculty members commuting to and from the campus, we take a special interest in road safety. The routes to each residential area are defined as the “least cost” paths that pass through areas classified under varying risk levels within an overall cost surface marked by car accidents that occurred in the previous year. These paths are created using ArcMap, and data from ICBC’s data catalogue.
The residential areas we have chosen are Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, and Surrey. These cities were chosen based on their variability in crash types and our assumptions that many people would commute from there to UBC. The least cost paths were created after a kernel density analysis to create a cost surface.
The goal of our project is to create a map of various least cost routes from UBC to residential areas in the GVRD. This map will hopefully bring awareness to young drivers, students and faculty about safe driving practices, frequency of car accidents and areas which have a high frequency of accidents.
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