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The Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-Madras) unveiled ‘Sanjaya,’ a cutting-edge location intelligence platform, in Haryana. This platform is designed to assist road-owning agencies, law enforcement, emergency care providers, and various road safety stakeholders in visualising data on high-frequency accident zones. The goal is to facilitate targeted interventions and strategic planning for road safety initiatives in Haryana.
Sanjaya serves as a unified platform for stakeholders to visualise crash black spots and identify emerging black spots, enabling them to determine the necessary interventions and their specific locations. The platform includes tools for kilometre analysis, corridor analysis, cluster analysis, and point radius analysis, with visualisations such as heat maps and trend patterns.
The platform facilitates map-based analyses of blackspots and emerging blackspots throughout the country, categorising them by the jurisdiction of states, districts, and police boundaries. This geographical breakdown allows for a detailed examination of specific areas prone to accidents. Additionally, the platform incorporates infographic and visual displays of data, providing a clear and concise representation of crash patterns within a desired region. This visual approach enhances comprehension and aids stakeholders in gaining a more insightful understanding of the prevailing road safety challenges.
Sanjeev Kaushal, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Chief Secretary of the Haryana government, commended this initiative by IIT-Madras, stating, “Sanjaya is an important tool designed to provide nuanced insights and targeted strategies towards making roads safer. We will also direct our attention to the regions that are witnessing higher crash rates and Sanjaya will help find out those critical hotspots.”
India presently holds the unfortunate distinction of having the highest incidence of road crashes and fatalities globally. Data from 2022, released by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), reveals that almost 60% of the fatalities occurred on a mere 5% of the roads, primarily comprising National and State Highways within the country.
The demographic of individuals within the working age group, ranging from 18 to 60 years, constitutes a staggering 83.4% of the overall road crash fatalities. This situation not only poses profound emotional and psychological challenges for families and society but also imposes substantial socioeconomic burdens on the nation.
Providing further details about the platform, Professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian, Head of the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) and RBG Labs, Department of Engineering Design at IIT-Madras, who is spearheading this initiative stated that planning target-specific interventions to mitigate road traffic accidents is important to reduce road accident fatalities. Intervention must be based on data so that authorities not only identify the problems on the road but also implement changes that are viable in the long term. Sanjaya is a platform to get actionable intelligence for jurisdictional leaders. This will empower stakeholders across Haryana to visualise district-wise high-frequency accident zones and aid in preparing an action plan for targeted rectification.
CoERS is financially supported by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to undertake an evidence-based integrated approach to road safety. CoERS focuses on multiple facets of human factors engineering, road engineering, and vehicle engineering to make substantial global improvements in road safety. Additionally, the Centre guides various stakeholders and governments, advocating for a data-driven systems approach to enhance road safety.
