Prioritizing Projects

In the previous step of safety management process crash countermeasures were determined and economically evaluated. The result was a set of appropriate countermeasures for specific condition with a benefit-cost ration of more than one i.e the benefits of the project (implementing countermeasures) justifies the costs of the project. But which one of those appropriate alternatives are the best one(s)? which one provides the most benefit to people and society? Although, budget restraint (for project costs) has to be considered in this process as well.

Now in this step, those countermeasures have to be prioritized based on their potential benefits. Optimization techniques and ranking methods based on different criteria can be used to prioritize the treatments (countermeasures). For example, one can rank all the alternatives suggested for a location based on their benefit-cost ratio and see which one(s) provide the highest benefit. Similarly, alternatives suggested for several locations can also be compared in this manner. One should always keep in mind that it is not only monetary values that affect the prioritization of alternatives. When several methodological criteria is used for prioritization, a computer program may be sued to optimize the results combining the outputs of several methods.

Finally, HSM talks about three basic optimization methods which are different types of programming optimization: linear, integer, and dynamic, with integer programming method being the most widely used method in the highway safety applications which is also available in the FHWA Safety Analyst software. 

Next is to evaluate the safety effectiveness of the countermeasures applied to a location.