Built Environment and Driving Outcomes: The Case for an Integrated GIS/GPS Approach

This study demonstrates a segment-based approach to integrate GIS and GPS data to address questions about the connections between the built environment and travel behaviors. Methods and challenges of GPS/ GIS integration are discussed, and an application integrating GPS naturalistic driving data from Southeast Michigan together with GIS data from several sources is demonstrated. The integrated dataset is used to explore connections between the built environment and driving behavior, specifically between business concentration, driving speed, vehicle stops and rear-end crashes. Driving speed, an important determinant of driver behavior linked to traffic safety, is found to be inversely related to business concentration, a pattern that does not vary by time of day. Rear-end crashes are found to increase with vehicle stops which increase with business concentration. This demonstration showed that fusing GPS and GPS data provides spatial intelligence which can be used to address planning, traffic safety, and transportation related issues.