Consolidation and preparation of event, time series and spatial data for analysis

Abstract

Transport forms part of our lives and is used by billions of people. Road traffic accidents happen every day and more than 2,000 fatalities are reported yearly in the United Kingdom alone. Accidents happen because of different factors and sometimes they are a consequence of an initial event. Data regarding accidents is an interest to both transport end users and traffic and infrastructure professionals. In this work, we are consolidating a number of spatial and non-spatial datasets I related to transport and accidents together, whilst making them available for a combination of spatial and non-spatial data querying. This is only possible after data quality within and across the original datasets is of an acceptable level in the resultant database. Our solution provides any user with easy query building, showing, saving and exporting results in different formats through a GUI. Furthermore, the application uses Google Maps to further facilitate data visualisation. Also, the system provides the user the ability to select a desired area of interest, either through drawing a polygon or upload a journey track, and creates queries that are spatially joined with the chosen area. Microsoft Visual Studio is used to create the user interface, while PostgreSQL and PostGIS are used for the integration, management and retrieval of both spatial and non-spatial data queries and functions. Various scriptring e.g. in SQL, was required. The integration and consolidation of spatial data from different sources is not trivial but doable as there is an issue of statistical data availability. Our system is another proof of the success of Open Source software. Their compliance to the OGC allows anyone to mash up tools which works well in our case to provide the users with easily accessible information about traffic accidents in the United Kingdom.