Papers published in Infrastructure Asset Management are eligible for awards from the Institution of Civil Engineers. Papers from any of the ICE journals can be nominated for several awards. In addition, each journal has awards dedicated to their specific subject area.
On Friday 7 October 2016, ICE president John Armitt presented awards to the following paper published in Infrastructure Asset Management in 2015. The Editorial Panel nominated their best papers and an awards committee chaired by Nigel Wright allocated the awards.
Infrastructure Asset Management Prize
The Infrastructure Asset Management Prize was awarded to Deublein et al. (2015).
Abstract
Although in 2014, Switzerland had an average of less than two fatalities per billion vehicle-kilometres, making its roads among the safest in Europe, still more than 17 000 traffic accidents occurred on Swiss communal roads, cantonal roads and national highways. On the highway network of approximately 1800 km alone, there were almost 1700 accidents involving personal injuries. In order to further reduce this number of accidents, it is important that accident risks are assessed as accurately as possible. A state-of-the-art methodology is used to develop a Bayesian probabilistic network model to estimate the number of accidents involving personal injury on the Swiss highway network. The developed model predicts the number of accidents on a given highway segment and can be used to identify segments with a high expected number of accidents. During validation, the number of accidents was correctly predicted on 86% of the segments with a tolerance of 25%. The model can also be used to conduct parametric studies, which help to ensure that the risk reduction interventions are effective and efficient. Road traffic and road infrastructure engineers and managers can use the model during the decision-making processes in the planning, construction and maintenance of road networks.
