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Getis–Ord Spatial Statistics to Identify Hot Spots by Using Incident Management

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Article  in  Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board · December 2010
DOI: 10.3141/2165-05

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Getis–Ord Spatial Statistics to Identify
Hot Spots by Using Incident
Management Data
Praprut Songchitruksa and Xiaosi Zeng
Traditionally, data have been collected to measure and improve the per-
formance of incident management (IM). While these data are less detailed
than crash records, they are timelier and contain useful attributes typ-
ically not reported in the crash database. This paper proposes the use of
Getis–Ord (Gi *) spatial statistics to identify hot spots on freeways from an
IM database while selected impact attributes are incorporated into the
analysis. The Gi* spatial statistics jointly evaluate the spatial dependency
effect of the frequency and attribute values within the framework of the
conceptualized spatial relationship. The application of the method was
demonstrated through a case study by using the incident database from
the Houston, Texas, Transportation Management Center (TranStar). The
method successfully identified the clusters of high-impact accidents from
more than 30,000 accident records from 2006 to 2008. The accident dura-
tion was used as a proxy measure of its impact. The proposed method
could be modified, however, to identify the locations with high-valued
impacts by using any other attributes, provided that they were either
continuous or categorical in nature and could provide meaningful impli-
cations. With improved intelligent transportation system infrastructure
and communication technology, hot spot analyses performed with IM
data of freeway network and arterials in the vicinity have become a much
more promising alternative. Freeway management agencies can use the
results of hot spot analysis to provide visualized information to aid the
decision-making process in the design, evaluation, and management of
IM strategies and resources. The limitations of the method and possible
future research are discussed in the closing section of the paper.
Over the past decade, more than 37,000 fatal crashes occurred every
year in the United States, which resulted in at least 1.3 highway
fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (1). A comprehen-
sive evaluation of every single entity to search for safety deficien-
cies is impractical and economically indefensible. This motivates
safety researchers to find an alternative approach to identify unsafe
locations and properly set their priorities.
Studies have demonstrated that crash history can be used to con-
struct the spatial distribution of crashes, which can then be used to
identify the locations with a tendency to exhibit an unusually high
degree of collision hazard (2–5). Various hot spot identification
TransLink Research Center, Texas Transportation Institute, Texas A&M Univer-
sity, 3135 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3135. Corresponding author:
P. Songchitruksa, praprut@tamu.edu.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,
No. 2165, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington,
D.C., 2010, pp. 42–51.
DOI: 10.3141/2165-05
42
(HSID) methods—also known as methods to identify black spots,
sites with promise, accident-prone areas, and hazardous locations—
have been employed to distinguish potentially problematic sites
from those sites that simply happened to have experienced a higher
than normal number of accidents during the course of observation.
HSID can be viewed as a sieve to minimize the number of locations
that necessitate further safety inspections, and help efficiently allo-
cate safety investment resources to initiate proper remedial actions.
In other words, priorities can be set on the basis of results obtained
from the use of this technique. HSID is a legislative requirement that
reflects the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.
The act dictated that each state develop strategies to identify safety
deficiencies within jurisdictional regions (2), as did amendments to
the act in 1998 and 2005 (SAFETEA-LU).
Studies of HSID techniques have resulted in a wide range of meth-
ods to identify hot spots in a more efficient and mathematically sound
manner. One commonality across these methods is that they rely
almost exclusively on the crash database. Such reliance, however, has
undesirable shortcomings, primarily because crash reports lack time-
liness. Alternatively, incident management (IM) data collected at
major transportation management centers (TMCs) offer a more timely
data source for hot spot analysis on the freeway network. These inci-
dent data are routinely logged and archived on a near real-time basis,
given that surveillance camera coverage is available. From all indica-
tions, no studies have yet been conducted to identify unusual spatial
patterns for the purpose of HSID through the use of an IM database.
In the study reported on here, the potential of HSID application
was examined by using the data attributes typically archived in the
IM database. The analyst no longer needs to wait several months to
a year for crash data to become available for analysis. The incident
data attributes were also examined that could be useful for HSID. A
technique is proposed to explore and identify the spatial heterogene-
ity of these incident data attributes. The proposed methodology is
demonstrated through a case study to identify high-risk locations on
a freeway network with the use of the Houston, Texas, TranStar IM
database.
HOT SPOT IDENTIFICATION
Attention paid to highway safety HSID started as early as the 1950s
when Norden et al. used statistical quality control techniques to ana-
lyze highway accident data (3). Over the past half century, safety
researchers have continued to mine crash databases to estimate the
safety performance of various types of transportation entities. Cor-
respondingly, a number of issues related to safety estimation have
been recognized and addressed in the HSID procedures.
Songchitruksa and Zeng
One issue is how hot spots are defined. The literature suggests two
paradigms: Hot spots may be referred as (a) fixed entities or as (b) clus-
ters of individual events. In the first paradigm, hot spot locations are
predetermined by fixed transportation entities (e.g., intersections,
roadway segments) and analysis of the aggregated crash data asso-
ciated with those locations determines if they are hot spots. The lat-
ter paradigm evaluates each crash individually and defines the hot
spots as those where unusual clusters of crash patterns are located.
This subtle difference has an important implication on how HSID
methods have been developed.
Overview of HSID Methods
Most HSID studies have focused on “fixed entities” and aggregated
the crash data for analyses. Several studies proposed that sites with
significantly higher crash frequencies than expected be identified as
hot spots (3–5). Hakkert and Mahalel and later McGuigan suggested
that sites with promise be designated as sites with potential accident
reduction (PAR), which is the difference between the observed
crash counts and the expected number of crashes (4–5). Both HSID
methods rank crash sites with respect to either site crash frequencies
(or crash rates, or both) or PAR. These definitions imply that HSID
can be based entirely on accident counts at the locations (6). An
alternative approach that relies on spatial analysis considers hot spot
regions as a set of contiguous spatial units characterized by a high
number of accidents (7).
One simple HSID method is to rank accident sites with respect
to site accident frequencies, accident rates, or both. The method is
straightforward but cannot address the regression-to-mean (RTM)
effect, and thus increases the likelihood of false positives in HSID
(6–8). One commonly accepted approach to address the RTM
effect is the empirical Bayes (EB) safety estimation method (6–7 ).
The EB method relies on the knowledge of two clues, which are the
known history of crashes at the site of concern and the expectation
about the safety of its “reference population” (6, 8–10). The EB
method is mathematically sound but can be complicated by the dif-
ficulty to establish proper reference entities (11). Building on the EB
method, the full Bayes (FB) method is rapidly being developed and
is considered a generalized version of the EB method. The FB
method can address the imperfections in the EB method, such as the
double-use of crash data and inadequacy of accounting for the
“uncertainty” of associations of covariate and safety (12).
The growing recognition of spatial information associated with the
transportation data has introduced another critical element into the
HSID analysis. This leads to an alternative spatial analysis approach,
which identifies hot spot regions as a set of “fixed” spatial units char-
acterized by a high number of crashes (7). One important variable in
the HSID with spatial information is how to define the geographical
boundaries (e.g., lengths/radii and centers of spatial units) within
which crash data can be aggregated. The definitions of boundaries
can vary, ranging from the resolutions of point in space (i.e., inter-
section), road segment, corridor, ward, zip code to city, to the reso-
lution of county (13–16). Safety researchers recognized the need
to define proper spatial resolutions, as varied analytical results might
result otherwise (10, 16–18). Varied aggregation schemes may affect,
to a certain extent, the spatial arrangement of crashes, and thus may
be inappropriate or even misleading when used to explain the data
that are spatially continuous in nature (19). When spatial information
of individual crash events is available (e.g., geographic location,
milepost), spatial units are no longer required to be referenced to any
43
“fixed entities.” Geocoding of these crash events to their locations
will preserve the spatial distribution of crash data and thus enable
the use of point pattern analysis for safety evaluation.
Point Pattern Analysis
Point pattern analysis determines whether an observed distribution
of point events results from a random pattern, or whether it follows
some systematic process so as to form a clustered or regular pattern
(20). This is similar to the concept defined for HSID in the context of
vehicle crashes. A number of methods have been developed for point
pattern analysis, such as nearest-neighbor distances, kernel density
estimation, and K-function (21). These methods focus on the distri-
butional phenomena of the point events; for examples, population
analysis (22) and the distribution pattern of cancer patients (20).
Studies in the context of crash analysis include the comparison of the
distribution of crash event locations with population concentrations
through use of the nearest-neighbor index (14) and of K-function
analysis in the constraint network environment (21).
These point pattern analyses account for spatial information but
still treat all sites equally regardless of their characteristics; in other
words, each point is equally weighted. The spatial autocorrelation
method is an advanced point-pattern-detection method, which incor-
porates not only the locations of point events but also their associated
values if appropriately defined (23). Moran’s I, a popular measure of
spatial autocorrelation (24), and Geary’s C have been employed to
evaluate the existence of clusters in the spatial arrangement of motor
vehicle crashes. In effect, these indices indicate whether the appar-
ent similarity (or dissimilarity) in values (e.g., the number of crashes)
at a given site and its neighbors is greater than expected in a random
distribution. While the Moran’s I either confirms the site of interest
as part of its surrounding sites (in cluster) or distinguishes the site
from the cluster, it cannot discriminate between patterns that are
high-value dominant or low-value dominant (19, 24, 25). This prob-
lem can be considered in the context of the spatial distribution of
total crash costs. The Moran’s I index value can distinguish the clus-
ters of crashes with extremely low and extremely high total costs
from the rest. But it cannot determine which specific clusters are the
high-value ones. This inability to discriminate between hot spots
and cold spots has led to consideration of a relatively new spatial
autocorrelation method known as Getis–Ord (Gi*) spatial statistics.
The Gi* spatial statistics method was introduced by Getis and
Ord. It can identify a tendency for positive spatial clustering and can
distinguish between the locations of high and low spatial associa-
tions (24, 25). The study reported here describes the use of Gi* spa-
tial statistics to identify hot spots from an IM database, where selected
incident attribute values were incorporated as proxies for incident
impacts. The proposed statistics were able to simultaneously cap-
ture the frequency of the events, the associated values, and spatial
correlation. The Gi* spatial statistics are described in the subsequent
sections. The application of statistics was demonstrated through a
case study that made use of Houston’s TranStar IM data.
IM Data Versus Crash Reports
HSID studies to date have relied almost exclusively on a crash data-
base, largely because of the lack of valid alternative data sources.
Crash data, nonetheless, are not timely and, in Texas, can take from
6 months to a year to become available. Crash data from police reports
44 Transportation Research Record 2165

are not always geographically coded. An examination of the Texas
Department of Transportation (DOT) Crash Records Information
System (CRIS) database from 2006 to 2008 indicated that 15% of
all records did not have coordinate information. The accident dura-
tions were not part of the CRIS database, and no documented study
has assessed the validity of coordinate data recorded in the CRIS
database.
An alternative data source for HSID on freeways is the IM data-
base. In Texas, all of the TMCs in metropolitan areas (i.e., Houston,
Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio) archive incident data
on a regular basis (26). These data are used primarily to monitor
freeway and IM performance (27 ). In addition to basic data attrib-
utes, such as incident type, incident detection, and clearance times,
the IM database contains descriptive location information and geo-
graphic coordinates, which are critical to the spatial analyses. Table 1
shows an example of selected incident attributes collected at Houston’s
TranStar. In the IM database, the accident type is a subset of one
type of incident. Incidents are defined as those events that may cause
disruption to the traffic flow or may require service attention (e.g.,
broken down vehicles in the shoulder lane). No distinction is made
between the terms “crash” and “accident” in this paper.
TranStar detects most of Houston’s incidents on the basis of
24/7 closed-captioned television scanning. The remainder is detected
through police dispatch monitoring, motorist assistance program calls,
and commercial traffic services (26). Operators generally log all inci-
dents as soon as they detect them from the scanning camera, regard-
less of cost or damages. Police reports are available if police are
dispatched to the scene; such reports are required in Texas only
when crash costs exceed $1,000 in damages. As redundant channels
of information feed the incident database, the likelihood is strong
that IM data are more thorough than crash reports, particularly for
crashes cleared rapidly and for those whose costs were below the
mandatory report threshold.
The use of IM data for HSID has certain shortcomings. Since the
data are primarily intended to measure IM performance, some attri-
butes such as specific crash types or crash contributing factors, are not
usually recorded. Overreporting of incidents may also be an issue, if
control operators duplicate entries or make errors that need to be cor-
rected. Fortunately, operational errors are discernible and can be fil-
tered out with an appropriate algorithm. By contrast, the timely HSID
on freeways is easier to achieve through the IM database, given
the time lag in the availability of crash reports and the dynamics of
traffic conditions that ebb and flow with changing demand and supply
conditions (e.g., capacity restriction from work zones).
SPATIAL STATISTICS
Instead of the application of nonspatial statistical models to the data
with spatial information, spatial statistics integrate spatial relationships
directly into their mathematics (19).
Spatial Autocorrelation
Tobler’s first law of geography stated that spatial units share more
similarities with nearby units than with units that are far apart (28).
This notion is known as spatial dependency. To study spatial depen-
dency, two types of analyses are done: (a) analysis of the spatial
structure of the locations (i.e., geographical positions) among a set
of spatial units, and (b) analysis of the spatial structure of the values
associated with a set of spatial units (29). Spatial autocorrelation can
be classified as the second type, since it investigates the covariations
for the properties of observations within a two-dimensional geo-
surface. Spatial autocorrelation analysis is particularly useful to
address the problems associated with HSID because every spatial
unit bears some quantifiable attributes (e.g., crash severity, crash
cost, impact duration) and not just location information.
Defining Spatial Units
To study the spatial structure of a subject requires an understanding
of the spatial arrangement of its smallest constituents—spatial units.
The definition of spatial units may vary, depending on the objectives
of a given analysis. Consider the spatial dependency among contigu-
ous roadway elements li (e.g., intersection, road segment): Incidents
that occurred in proximity have to be aggregated to form an integral
representation of li. On the contrary, when the emphasis is on the
spatial distribution of individual incidents xi, the incidents should
remain disaggregated. In the former circumstance, the spatial units
are defined as roadway segments (Type 1 definition), and the spatial

TABLE 1 Example of Incident Management Database (Houston, Texas)

ID Roadway Name Cross Street Name Direction Latitude Longitude Severity

683XX IH-610 North Loop US-59, Eastex Westbound 29.8082 −95.3361 Major
683XX IH-610 North Loop Shepherd Dr. Westbound 29.8128 −95.4103 Major
683XX South Sam Houston Blackhawk Eastbound 29.6007 −95.2474 Major
Tollway
683XX IH-10 Katy Baker Cypress Rd. Eastbound 29.7845 −95.6883 Major
683XX IH-610 East Loop SH-225 Southbound 29.7099 −95.267 Major
683XX West Sam Houston IH-10 Katy Northbound 29.7844 −95.5692 Minor
Tollway
683XX IH-45 FM-1764/Johnny Southbound 29.40838 −95.0369 Major
Palmer Highway
683XX SH-288 OREM Northbound 29.6276 −95.3872 Major
: : : : : : :

NOTE: The table shows selected incident attributes that are consistently recorded and potentially useful for the HSID.
Songchitruksa and Zeng 45

∑
n
statistics consequently return collective values that characterize the wij x j
j =1
distribution of location variable L. In the latter case, individual inci- G* = (1)
∑
i n
dents correlate with each other rather than the roadway segments j =1
xj
and thus constitute the spatial distribution (Type 2 definition). The
spatial statistics method then calculates the significance of spatial
where
dependency of incident variable X.
The Type 2 definition of spatial units leaves the spatial distribu- Gi* = statistic that describes the spatial dependency of incident i
tion of incidents intact, does not require any aggregation scheme, over all n events,
and treats each individual incident as a unit of analysis where xj = magnitude of variable X at incident location j over all n
located. The Type 2 definition was used in this study. (j may equal i), and
wij = weight value between event i and j that represents their
spatial interrelationship.
Gi* Spatial Statistic
Usually, wij is calculated on the basis of the conceptualized spatial
A family of G statistics, originally developed by Getis and Ord relationship and in reference to d. Hence it is often written as wij(d).
(24–25), is used to study the evidence of identifiable spatial patterns. The value of d (e.g., Cartesian distance) is a user-specified thresh-
Similar to Moran’s I and Geary’s C, the general G statistic is global old. However, the argument d may be omitted depending on the
in that the overall degree of spatial interdependency is studied, specification of spatial relationship. Gi* statistics may vary according
which results in a single index for the entire study area (19). These to the selection of d.
global statistics are usually too general in a way that local patterns For Gi* in its simplest form, wij is a binary where 1 is to include
are likely to be neutralized over a vast area and become undetected. and 0 is to exclude the relationship between incidents i and j com-
pletely. Since Σ j=1 xj remains constant for all i, to include an
n
The fact that the level of spatial dependency may vary significantly
across the space suggests that the capacity to detect and pinpoint increased number of high-valued incident events j would result in a
spatial heterogeneity is more desirable. Local Moran’s I was then higher Gi* index. This implies that high frequencies and high values
developed by decomposing Global Moran’s I to compensate for are both contributing factors. The wij can be extended to nonbinary
such limitations and frequently used in many hot spot analyses of values as they were in this study.
motor vehicle safety (7, 15, 23). The family of Moran indices, how- The sum of the weights (Wi) is defined as
ever, does not discriminate between hot spots and cold spots. The
Gi* index is therefore more suitable because it can locate unsafe Wi = ∑ j =1 wij .
n
(2)
regions on a global scale and discern cluster structures of high- or
low-value concentration among local observations.
Consider the study area subdivided into n indefinite size of It can be shown that the expectation (E) of Gi* is
regions where each region is identified with a central point i (1, 2,
. . . , n), and incidents are labeled with exact Cartesian coordinates. Wi
The goal was to examine the existence of a spatial pattern for a ran- E ( Gi*) = (3)
n
dom variable X, a selected incident attribute, whose values xi, were
associated with every region individually; in turn, if xi exhibited
similarities between contiguous regions, it could be claimed that the where n is the number of incidents, and the variance of Gi* is
spatial autocorrelation of variable X existed over region i. Spatial
s 2 Wi ( n − Wi )
Var ( Gi*) =
dependency was assumed in the process. A simple form of the Gi* i (4)
statistic as defined by Getis and Ord (25) is x n −1

No. of Vehicles No. of Mainlanes

Type Weather Response Involved Blocked Detected Time Cleared Time ...

Accident Rain City 1 2 1/1/2008 0:47 1/1/2008 1:27 ...

Stall Ice Coroner 2 1 1/1/2008 2:40 1/1/2008 3:08 ...
High water Hail County 2 1 1/1/2008 3:11 1/1/2008 5:01 ...

Lost load Fog EMS 2 0 1/1/2008 3:14 1/1/2008 4:33 ...

Fire High wind Fire dept. 1 2 1/1/2008 4:21 1/1/2008 4:26 ...
Hazmat Dust Metro 1 0 1/1/2008 4:34 1/1/2008 4:38 ...

Accident Smoke Map 1 0 1/1/2008 4:48 1/1/2008 5:13 ...

Stall Other Police 2 1 1/1/2008 5:23 1/1/2008 6:03 ...

: : : : : : :
46
The sample mean (x–) and the sample variance (s2) of variable X are
defined as
∑ ∑
n n
xj x 2j
j =1 j =1
x= ;s 2
= − x2
n n
The distribution of the Gi* statistic is normal when the normality is
also observed in the underlying distribution of variable X. However,
when the underlying distribution is nonnormal (e.g., heavily skewed
incident duration), the test statistic becomes nonnormal correspond-
ingly. In such cases, an increase in the number of spatial units in
the clusters analyzed will help the distribution of the Gi* statistic
approach normality. One common method is to raise the value of d to
include more xj. Under the exact or asymptotical normal conditions,
Gi*is usually standardized based on its sample mean and variance:
∑ wij x j − x ∑ j =1 wij2
n n
Z ( Gi*) = j =1
( )
2
n∑ j =1 wij2 − ∑ j =1 wij
n n
s Data Requirement
n −1
The standardized Gi* is essentially a Z score and therefore can be
attached to the statistical significance. A close-to-zero Gi* value
implies random distribution of the observed spatial events. Con-
versely, positive and negative Gi* statistics with high absolute values
correspond to the clusters of high- and low-valued events, respec-
tively. The negative Gi*, however, indicates a tendency of clusters of
events with short incident durations. In summary, if the calculated
index values are greater than a threshold associated with statistical
significance, the location of a cluster is identified as a hot spot. There-
fore, any roadway entities that are nearby or that encompass such a
cluster are identified as hot spots.
Bonferroni Correction
The calculation of a Gi* index is equivalent to a null hypothesis test
where a rejection indicates a hot spot. The Type 2 spatial definition
examines all n events, and each event requires one independent test.
As n becomes large, the number of tests increases significantly. Even
with a 99% confidence level, one out of 100 events could be falsely
classified as a hot spot or vice versa. Furthermore, the increase in n
can make the study area so dense that the tests for nearby xi may
include common neighbors. This violates the independence of the test
(19). Ord and Getis have suggested that the Bonferroni correction be
applied when n is large and the study area is dense (24).
The Bonferroni test minimizes the likelihood of misidentification
of spatial dependency. The simplest form is to divide the confidence
level, α, by the number of tests. However, such a practice becomes
unduly conservative when n becomes too large. The coefficient of
mean correlation can be factored into the Bonferroni adjustment
to allow correction of the α level to avoid it becoming either too
conservative or too aggressive.
Conceptualization of Spatial Relationship
Conceptualization of spatial relationship summarizes how spatial units
interact with one another. For instance, spatial relationship can be
defined as the closer the more influential or, even counterintuitively,
the closer the less important. Several commonly used homogeneous
Transportation Research Record 2165
mathematical models conceptualize spatial relationship, such as
impedance, sphere of influence, zone of indifference, and K nearest
neighbors (19, 30). The zone of indifference method is more appro-
priate for HSID applications as it assigns high weights of influence
(5) to those incidents within a specified zone (e.g., intersection radius,
freeway segment) and much less weight to those outside the zone.
CASE STUDY OF HOUSTON’S IM DATA
The Houston TranStar is a partnership of four public agencies—
Texas DOT, Harris County, the Metropolitan Transit Authority of
Harris County, and the City of Houston. TranStar operates 24 hours
a day 7 days a week. The center has collected and archived freeway
incident data since 1996. The TranStar’s incident data from 2006 to
2008 were used in this study. Only accident type was considered in
the analysis. After duplicate and erroneous entries were removed
from the database, 33,192 accident records remained for analysis.
(6)
The first step was to check if the incident data attributes were sufficient
for analysis. As noted, characterization of incident data entails evalu-
ation of temporal and spatial patterns in the distribution of incidents.
Two types of data attributes are generally required for HSID:
• Temporal attributes. Typically collected as time logs for vari-
ous events in an incident timeline. The most critical temporal element
is the incident occurrence time. The incident detection or notification
time is often used to signify the incident starting time since the actual
occurrence time can be difficult to obtain.
• Spatial attributes. Used to identify incident locations on a free-
way. For TranStar, each incident record had descriptive location
information referenced by a freeway intersection and the nearest
cross street, a geographic coordinate for the intersection (i.e., latitude
and longitude), and a location identifier (before, at, and after) for the
actual location of the incident with respect to the nearest cross street.
Location identifiers were not used in this study as they were not
always consistently recorded. As a result, the spatial distribution of
incidents may be slightly displaced from the actual occurrences.
A sufficiently large displacement may cause false positive or
false negative clustering in the hot spot results. This study defined
the spatial relationship by using the zone of indifference. Therefore,
the impacts from the displacement were minimal as long as the dis-
placement was not greater than the defined radius of the zone of
indifference.
Selection of Impact Attributes
For the purpose of HSID, the focus was on areas where high-impact
accidents were clustered. Figure 1a and 1b illustrate the correla-
tions between incident durations and the number of vehicles involved
and the number of main lanes blocked, respectively. These relation-
ships imply that the duration can serve as a proxy of incident impact.
Therefore, duration was selected as an impact attribute in this case
study.
Figure 2 exhibits the distributions of accident durations and their
natural-logarithm-transformed counterparts. A log-transformed dura-
tion accounted for the scaling effect of duration data. To illustrate,
Songchitruksa and Zeng 47

55 180
50 Incident (All Types) 160 Incidents (All Types)
Average Duration (min)

Average Duration (min)

Accident Accidents
45 140 Stall
Stall
120
40 * Data Period: 2006 to 2008
100 * Stall Type Generally Blocks No More
35 Than 3 Main Lanes
80
30
60
25 * Data Period: 2006 to 2008
* Only Consider Incidents Causing 40
20 Main Lane Blocking
20
15 0
1 2 3 4 5 ≥6 1 2 3 4 5 and more All
Number of Vehicles Involved Number of Main Lanes Blocked
(a) (b)

FIGURE 1 Median incident duration: (a) number of vehicles involved and (b) number of main lanes blocked.

consider a 5-min increment for 10-min accidents versus 100-min
accidents. Without using the transformation, both increments would
be weighed equally in the analytical process when in fact the same
increment at a higher duration should have much less influence in the
analysis. Second, extreme input values may bias the calculation of
the Gi* statistic, and log-transformation may reduce the impact of
this issue. The strict normality of the underlying distribution of the
attribute was desirable but not required to calculate a proper stan-
dardized Gi* statistic. The logarithm transformed the nonnormal
duration data into a bell-shaped form, which was closer to the nor-
mality assumption. With asymptotical normality, analysts can statis-
tically control the number of hot spots to be identified based on
specified confidence level. The spatial distribution of the data set was
maintained in the transformation of the data attribute (24–25). Hence,
the duration data were log-transformed for the analysis in this study.
accident durations. In this study, a total of 33,192 calculations for
3 years of data were performed by using the ArcGIS software pack-
age developed by the Environmental Systems Research Institute.
The radius threshold of 2,500 ft was selected to ensure that each
accident had at least six neighbors, as suggested by Getis and Aldstadt
(30). This conceptualization gave equal weight to all accidents
within this critical distance. The weight dropped off significantly for
those accidents beyond this threshold on the basis of the inverse of
their relative distances.
For the purpose of HSID, a high positive standardized Gi* sta-
tistic implied that the accidents were located within the clusters of
those with high accident durations at a high degree of statistical
confidence level.
Results

Calculation of Spatial Statistics For comparison purposes, a map of hot spots was prepared by using
frequency ranking and median-duration-based methods. The fre-
The coefficients of local spatial autocorrelation, Gi*, were calcu- quency ranking method combined all accidents by location within the
lated for each individual accident by using the natural logarithm of study period. Frequency may be normalized by appropriate exposure

Log of Duration
-4 -2 0 2 4 6
6,000 20,000

Duration
Frequency of Log of Duration

5,000
16,000
Frequency of Duration

Log of Duration
4,000
12,000
3,000
8,000
2,000

4,000
1,000

0 0
0 50 100 150 200
Duration (min)

FIGURE 2 Empirical distributions of actual and logarithmic-transformed accident durations.

48
(e.g., duration of data period, traffic volume, length of segment).
The results were then ranked and the hot spots identified as those
that exceeded the specified threshold. Although the method has the-
oretical flaws (i.e., RTM effect), it has been frequently used because
of its simplicity. Moran’s I index is a commonly used variation
of frequency-based spatial statistics. The median-duration-based
method considers the duration as an impact measure and treats those
locations with high median duration as hot spots.
Figure 3 displays a geographic information system map with the
hot spots identified by simple frequency ranking, median duration
ranking, and spatial statistic (Gi*) methods. The top 20 locations
from the first two methods were defined as hot spots. The hot spot
threshold for Gi* statistics was defined based on a two-tailed Z-score
at a Bonferroni corrected confidence level of 95%, which was equiv-
alent to 3.06 (a mean correlation of 0.70). This threshold resulted in
FIGURE 3 Hot spot results.
Transportation Research Record 2165
2,602 accidents distributed densely among 25 clusters of high-duration
accidents. The roadway entities that encompassed these clusters
as hot spot locations were then defined. In this study, these clus-
ters were referenced to the nearest cross streets on the freeway.
By adjusting the significance level, the analysis could produce
either a higher or a lower number of high-duration accidents and
correspondingly more or less clusters of hot spots.
Discussion of Results
Frequency-based hot spots were located along IH-45 between Belt-
way 8 North and IH-610 North Loop as well as at the junction
between US-59 and IH-610 West Loop. This was to be expected
because these locations generally experience heavy traffic volume
012 4 6 8
Miles
Songchitruksa and Zeng 49

(traffic exposure) and frequent congestion and thus contribute to the
high frequency of accidents.
By contrast, duration-based hot spots were located primarily outside
Beltway 8. Several possibilities may explain this finding. First, these
locations might have limited surveillance coverage, which in turn
might limit the ability of operators to closely monitor events visually.
These locations also may be farther away from responder locations. As
a result, it could take longer for operators to verify an incident, coordi-
nate with appropriate responders, and monitor as to when the incident
has been cleared, resulting in an increase in incident duration. Finally,
these locations generally have higher prevailing traffic speed, therefore
increasing the possibility of more severe crashes. Such crashes take
longer to clear and thus lead to longer durations.
The Gi* spatial statistics method also accounts for frequency and
duration attributes simultaneously, but in addition it takes into account
the spatial information of each accident. The hot spots were indicated
by those with Gi* statistics greater than 3.06 (Bonferroni-adjusted
95% confidence level). These locations exhibited an unusually high
degree of clustering of accidents with long accident durations. The
likelihood that the clustering of long-duration accidents occurred by
chance was less than 5%. The map shows that Gi* hot spots partially
coincided with those identified through frequency-based (25%) and
duration-based methods (25%).
In addition to the Gi* statistics, simpler alternatives were evalu-
ated by combining frequency and duration for HSID, which were
the product of frequency and median duration (FM method) and of
frequency and average duration (FA method). The results were
sorted, and the top 20 locations from both methods were compared
with the existing hot spot results. It was found that 75% and 80% of
the top 20 sites respectively identified as hot spots from the FM and
FA methods coincided with the hot spot results identified from the
frequency-based method. Only 25% matched, however, when the
same comparison was made between results from the frequency-
based and the Gi* statistics methods. This implies that the FM and
FA methods do not provide any advantage over the frequency-based
method.
To illustrate how the Gi* spatial statistics work to identify hot spots,
Table 2 shows a comparison of selected accident hot spots identified
from three different approaches along with their corresponding
frequencies and summary statistics of accident durations.
As the table shows, the frequency and duration were respectively
dominant in the frequency-based and duration-based methods. In
the frequency-based method, all of the top-ranked locations had
relatively lower median and average durations. This indicates that
accidents of short duration tend to occur frequently. These sites are
likely to experience frequent minor accidents from heavy traffic
exposure rather than severe accidents. Therefore, the Gi* value was
relatively low for these sites. In some extreme cases, such as at the
intersection of West Sam Houston Toll Way and South Sam Plaza,
the frequency was as high as 188, and the median duration was as
low as 10.11 min. Such a high-frequency–low-duration situation
yielded a Gi* index of −9.98. Technically, these locations are “cold
spots,” where low-impact accidents tend to cluster. In contrast, in
the duration-based method, many sites had high-duration statistics

TABLE 2 Comparison of Hot Spot Results

No. of Accidents Mean Median

Within a Duration Standard Deviation Duration Average
Roadway Cross Street 2,500-ft Radius (min) of Duration (min) (min) Gi* Indices

High Frequency Hot Spots

US-59 southwest IH-610 west loop 530 28.49 30.04 20.56 1.61
IH-45 north IH-610 north loop 414 28.69 30.06 19.03 1.25
IH-610 west loop US-59 southwest 372 29.66 24.60 22.68 1.61
IH-45, Gulf Broadway St.–Park Place 291 28.96 35.51 18.05 −0.58
US-59 southwest Chimney Rock Rd. 283 29.43 26.47 21.12 0.99
IH-45 north Gulf Bank Rd. 266 29.57 27.43 23.68 0.66
High Median Duration Hot Spots
IH-45 FM-3083–Teas Nursery 7 117.99 109.42 120.72 2.40
BELTWAY 8-north Fairbanks North Houston Rd. 6 110.74 132.92 77.83 0.30
IH-45 Creighton Rd. 11 67.45 61.73 70.17 2.12
SH-225 Bearle St. 13 45.16 32.18 54.62 1.48
BELTWAY 8-south SH-288 31 47.89 46.32 44.02 2.54
US-59 Sweetwater Blvd. 23 53.14 51.88 40.01 1.79
High Gi* Index Hot Spots
IH-10 east Jensen Dr. 47 50.49 53.09 29.73 6.44
US-59, EASTEX IH-10 east 82 86.35 174.35 32.00 6.43
SH-288 Almeda–Genoa Rd. 95 46.82 35.41 42.20 4.82
IH-610 south loop SH-288 121 44.67 69.26 33.12 4.70
IH-45 SH-242 64 47.48 45.28 34.12 3.71
IH-45 north Hardy Toll Rd. 96 42.37 41.44 32.97 3.60
Average of all locations (2006–2008) 57.00 39.04 43.04 25.65 —

NOTE: The study defined accidents with Gi* larger than 3.06 as hot spots (95% Bonferroni-corrected confidence level).
50
but experienced only a handful of accidents. They were identified
as hot spots with the duration-based method but not with the Gi*
method.
The Gi* statistic, however, balances these two attributes. That is,
both frequency and duration have to be high for a site to be a hot
spot candidate. Of course, this is not the only condition. For the Gi*
method to label hot spots, the cluster of accidents has to comprise
high-duration events in a more statistically consistent fashion as
compared with all other clusters. The appropriate level of statistical
significance can also be specified and adjusted to balance the number
of hot spots identified with available IM resources. In this manner, the
results are more consistent and reliable.
SUMMARY
Traditionally, incident management data have been collected to mea-
sure and improve the performance of IM procedure. While these data
are less detailed than crash records, they are timelier and frequently
contain useful data elements for freeway safety evaluation typically
unavailable in the crash database. This paper proposes the use of a
spatial statistics method to identify hot spots or high-risk locations
from an IM database and to incorporate selected incident attributes
into the analysis. The selected attributes should be representative of
the impacts of the units investigated. The units of analysis and impact
attributes can be tailored to suit the study objectives (e.g., hot spots
for truck-related accidents; accidents with slow response times).
Depending on the analysis objectives, the analyst may find differ-
ent uses of the results from different methods. Frequency-based hot
spots may be suitable if the goal is to develop strategies to improve
accident detection time. In such cases, the gain can be most achieved
through improved detection capabilities at these locations. If the
objective is to reduce accidents with long durations, the analyst may
shift the focus to duration-based hot spots, which may require fur-
ther investigation into the crash contributing factors. The solution
may be to increase surveillance camera coverage or to adjust the routes
and the frequencies of courtesy patrols, or both. When a single objec-
tive no longer meets the analysis requirement, the proposed spatial
autocorrelation method, which uses local statistic (Gi*), is an effec-
tive and practical solution. This study has demonstrated its utility
and how it can be applied to identify freeway locations with high-
duration accidents using Houston’s IM data archive with emphasis
on identification of the clusters of high-impact accidents.
The Gi* spatial statistic has an advantage over the more popular
Moran’s I index because it can distinguish high-valued from low-
valued local spatial structures; thus it is more suitable for HSID appli-
cations. Although the results of Gi* analysis consider the joint effects
of high frequency and high duration in the detection of hot spots,
extremely large accident durations can strongly influence the hot spot
results even though the accident frequencies may be low at those
locations. This undesirable consequence was mitigated in this study
when the level of contiguity in the analysis was increased and thus
more neighboring accidents (the sample size effect) were included.
The accident duration attribute used in this study served as a
proxy of accident impacts. Application of the Gi* method is not nec-
essarily limited to the duration, however. In fact, any attributes that
are either continuous or categorical in nature may be candidates as
long as the spatial clusters of high or low values can provide mean-
ingful implications. For example, clusters of freeway accidents with
long response times can be identified by using this technique. A total
accident cost is another valid impact measure if it can be reliably
Transportation Research Record 2165
quantified. The measure can be calculated such that it also includes
the incident-induced traffic congestion cost.
Freeway agencies can use the hot spot results from IM data in
various ways. Hot spots are very useful to provide visualized infor-
mation to aid the decision-making process in the design, evalua-
tion, and management of IM strategies and resources. Some of the
strategies that can be used to improve incident detection and response
times include the improvement of the schedules of roving courtesy
patrols, installment and adjustment of the rotation of surveillance
cameras, and the planning of locations to improve traffic sensor
coverage.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
As with any HSID method, the proposed methodology has certain
limitations. Because the local statistic for each incident is calculated
in relation to all other incidents, the computational resource required
can be demanding when the sample size gets large. The Gi* statis-
tics method can tell if the accident of reference lies in the cluster of
high/low values, but it cannot distinguish on a global scale which
hot spot clusters have the higher values compared with other hot spot
clusters. In other words, the method cannot prioritize hot spots within
hot spots (31).
Incident duration may not be an ideal proxy of incident impacts,
particularly when the traffic volume is light (e.g., at nighttime). Future
research should attempt to identify appropriate proxy measures
from the crash database and conduct comparative evaluations of the
proposed method by using different data sources.
The alternative conceptualization of spatial relationship is worth
exploring. Spatial weights were defined among location i and j (wij )
as a constant radius in this study. The level of contiguity may best
be varied by depending on the level of heterogeneity (e.g., connec-
tivity, accessibility) observed in the types and geometries of the
transportation infrastructure studied. For example, a system of basic
coordinated intersections or a long stretch of homogeneous freeway
segments should be treated as one unit of spatial cluster. Although
several models of spatial conceptualization have commonly relied
on a user-specified cut-off distance, application of such a homoge-
neous model to a heterogeneous traffic environment is an over-
simplification. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that the planar
spatial statistics have not recognized the constraints from complex
highway networks (21). Construction of a network weight matrix is
therefore recommended to address heterogeneous major roadway
properties in future research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was performed in cooperation with Texas DOT.
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The contents of this paper reflect the views of the authors and do not necessar-
ily reflect the official views or policies of TxDOT.
The Statistical Methods Committee peer-reviewed this paper.