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FHWA Highway Safety Programs

Resources on Data Collection Methodologies

The FHWA Office of Safety is currently developing several resources that can provide additional information and assistance.  Through the MIRE initiative, FHWA is releasing a report entitled Exploring MIRE Element Data Collection Mechanisms (7).  This research will provide an overview of:

  • The MIRE elements States are already collecting.
  • Supplemental data sources that could be used to obtain MIRE data elements – including pavement management systems, sign management systems, and other asset inventories.
  • Information on existing and emerging data collection technologies and their potential for use in collecting MIRE data elements (of which the FDE/HSIP are a subset).  These include satellite imagery, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), and applications of keyhole markup language and geobrowsers such as Google Earth and Bing.

Graphic. Image of the cover for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program Synthesis 367: Technologies for Improving Safety Data Report.FHWA will also be releasing a MIRE Data Collection Manual as a guidebook for use by State and local agencies to learn innovative methods for collecting MIRE data.  It is imperative that the MIRE data elements be collected properly and consistently.  The MIRE Data Collection Manual will describe how to collect and record MIRE data elements, and provide a process for post-processing of data.

In addition to these FHWA resources, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) released Syntheses 367: Technologies for Improving Safety Data, which explores technologies for the acquisition, processing, and overall management of crash, roadway inventory, and traffic operations data (8).  While it is not specific to the MIRE elements, there is still information in the report that States may find useful.

The report can be found online at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_syn_367.pdf.