The ‘Quarterly updates’ and ‘More vehicle data’ developments will be considered in a separate article to be published soon.

The issue of indexing reports by population, age and traffic were all quite high on the list and are currently being investigated in more detail.  We have access to a number of data sets which could be used and our preference is to get population & age data at a postcode level if possible.   With the recent publication of the DfT’s Strategic Framework for Road Safety, casualty rates have become a national priority for measuring success.  Those of you who have taken the time to read through the document in detail will be aware that the new ‘Outcome Indicators’ rely on the use of casualty rates, rather than raw figures and this is something we will also be implementing in MAST as soon as possible.  At the moment we can’t say whether all of those indexes will be available at the time of the next update.  We will be producing a report in the summer though showing how performance varies across the country and this will be sent to all MAST members as a priority.

Of particular interest to me was the overwhelming support for ‘Fully-automated online thematic mapping’.  We have been considering what options are available to us and have contacted several suppliers of online mapping technologies to see what can be developed.  If we are to offer a fully-integrated solution then this would involve installing GIS software on the current MAST web-server and accessing the same ‘data cubes’ before presenting the result to the end user via a web interface.  Unfortunately the costs of the software licences alone are in excess of £50,000 per year and that’s before development costs and a higher-spec server required to process the maps.  This means that we have to rule out an ‘all-singing, all-dancing’ solution for the time being – unless we double the MAST membership fees!  We have however been able to identify a more cost effective solution that can be licenced per user using pre-analysed data which could cover 80% of the mapping capabilities at a fraction of the cost.  As it’s a per-user licence, individual members can chose whether they want to add this to their MAST membership.  It’s very early days but the trials have been positive and I will post further updates in the coming months with the hope to have a suitable system available in the autumn.

Conference and general MAST feedback

The majority of people who commented said the location of the conference was good or excellent with only two commenting that it was a poor choice.  The venue itself was highly praised with more than half saying it was ‘Excellent’ (we will pass on your praise).  As far as the content was concerned, more than two-thirds described Bruce’s ‘Bite-size’ presentations as ‘Excellent’ and the other content was also highly-praised.  We wanted to create a conference with a different ‘feel’ and it seems to have paid off.

We asked how we could support you in the coming year and of those who responded, 64% said they would welcome another annual event, 47% would like to become members of a regional user-group, and 34% would like to see more reports covering national issues.  We will take this on board and consider what we can do to support the regional user-groups in the coming months.  Another annual conference early next year seems a certainty and we may well use the same venue as it proved popular.

Finally we asked people what they thought of our support services.  All were supportive of the Wiki, forum and YouTube channel; although there wasn’t much interest in the Twitter feed!  We will continue to develop these services and update them as we carry out new developments.

Author:  Richard Owen - Operations Director, Road Safety Analysis