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Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology
Coordinating, Developing, and Delivering Highway Transportation Innovations

Report
This report is an archived publication and may contain dated technical, contact, and link information
Publication Number: FHWA-HRT-07-046
Date: August 2007

Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements—MMIRE

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FOREWORD

Good safety and highway inventory data are crucial in today’s processes to make sound safety improvement decisions. They will become even more important, if agencies are to take advantage of a new generation of safety analysis tools, such as the FHWA’s Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) and SafetyAnalyst, AASHTO’s Data and Analysis Guide, and the Highway Safety Manual. Development of a Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements, referred to as MMIRE, is recommended so that State, local, and Federal agencies understand the importance of roadway inventory and traffic data for safety programs and know what critical roadway data variables are required to make more effective and efficient safety improvement decisions, as well as to take advantage of current and future cutting-edge analytical tools and resources.

The establishment and adoption of MMIRE has potential advantages beyond improved safety. State and local asset management systems also will benefit by collecting and monitoring of the MMIRE. Since a major portion of MMIRE will be comprised of an inventory of various roadway assets, asset managers can benefit from standardized definitions, consistent measurement accuracies, and geo-spatial location and performance levels of these assets. This joint effort between safety and asset management can result in shared data, improved interdepartmental cooperation, reductions in data discrepancy, and improved data collection and reliability. The initiative will improve both the overall safety and the asset management programs. Finally, collection of MMIRE in a current asset management system will allow safety practitioners to access that information from the database and reduce the burden on enforcement or investigators to collect the information at the crash scene.

Michael F. Trentacoste
Director, Office of Safety
Research and Development

Notice

This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for the use of the information contained in this document.

The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trademarks or manufacturers' names appear in this report only because they are considered essential to the objective of the document.

Quality Assurance Statement

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement.

Technical Report Documentation Page

1. Report No.

FHWA-HRT-07-046

2. Government Accession No.

3. Recipient’s Catalog No.

4. Title and Subtitle

Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements—MMIRE

5. Report Date

August 2007

6. Performing Organization Code
N/A

7.Author(s)
Forrest M. Council, David L. Harkey, Daniel L. Carter and Bryon White

8. Performing Organization Report No.
N/A

9. Performing Organization Name and Address
VHB
8300 Boone Blvd., Suite 700
Vienna, VA 22182-2624

The University of North Carolina
Highway Safety Research Center
730 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3430

10. Work Unit No. (TRAIS)
N/A

11. Contract or Grant No.
DTFH61-03-00105

12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address

Federal Highway Administration
Office of Safety Research and Development
6300 Georgetown Pike
McLean, VA 22101-2296

13. Type of Report and Period Covered

Final Report, September 2004—
November 2006

14. Sponsoring Agency Code

15. Supplementary Notes

Contracting Officer's Technical Representative (COTR): Carol Tan, HRDS-06

16. Abstract

Safety data provide the key to making sound decisions on the design and operation of roadways, but deficiencies in many States’ safety databases do not allow for good decisionmaking. The Federal Highway Administration, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program sponsored a scanning study of how agencies in the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia develop and use traffic safety information systems. That scan produced a report that included recommendations for advancing safety themes in the areas of strategy, efficiency, and utility. A recently completed follow-on effort built on the scan team’s final report and draft implementation plan by reviewing in detail the strategies suggested, providing action-related details to some of the critical strategies, and adding new strategies to help reach the team’s goals.(1) As noted in that White Paper, while considerable attention and effort has been devoted to the improvement in crash data, one of the primary safety databases, much less effort has been devoted to improvements in the second primary safety database–roadway inventory and traffic data. One of the five critical strategies detailed there involved improving safety data by defining good inventory data, and specifically recommended the development of a Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Element (MMIRE) that would define the critical inventory and traffic data elements needed by State and local jurisdictions to meet current safety analysis needs and data needs arising from a new generation of safety analysis tools. This current report presents a proposed MMIRE and documents the development process, which included review of the proposed MMIRE elements in a workshop of safety data experts. A listing of high-priority and supplemental inventory and traffic elements are presented, along with proposed coding for each element.

17. Key Words
safety data, traffic safety information systems, road inventory data, traffic data, data collection

18. Distribution Statement
No restrictions. This document is available to the public through the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161.

19. Security Classif. (of this report)

Unclassified

20. Security Classif. (of this page)

Unclassified

21. No. of Pages

81

22. Price

Form DOT F 1700.7 (8-72) Reproduction of completed page authorized.(art. 5/94)

Metric Conversion Chart


TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

DEFINITION OF AND RATIONALE FOR MMIRE

PRIORITIZING DATA COLLECTION

CLOSURE

APPENDIX A. MMIRE WORKSHOP ATTENDEES

APPENDIX B. PROPOSED MMIRE ELEMENTS

APPENDIX C. PROPOSED MMIRE ELEMENT CODING

APPENDIX D. PRIORITY SAFETY VARIABLES IN THE NATIONAL BRIDGE INDEX AND THE USDOT NATIONAL HIGHWAY-RAIL CROSSING INVENTORY

REFERENCES

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Category and subcategory headings for MMIRE elements

Table 2. High priority safety variables in the National Bridge Inventory

Table 3. High-priority safety variables in the USDOT National Highway Rail Crossing Inventory

ACRONYMS

AADT annual average daily traffic
AASHTO American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
ADT average daily traffic
AMF accident modification factor
DOT department of transportation
FHWA Federal Highway Administration
FIPS Federal Information Processing Standards
GLC geographic locator code
GSA General Services Administration
HPMS Highway Performance Monitoring System
HSIS Highway Safety Information System
HSM Highway Safety Manual
IHSDM Interactive Highway Safety Design Model
ITRF International Traffic Records Forum
MMIRE Model Minimum Inventory of Roadway Elements
MMUCC Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria
NCHRP National Cooperative Highway Research Program
NHTSA National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
SAFETEA-LU Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users
TRB Transportation Research Board
TSIMS Transportation Safety Information Management System
USDOT U.S. Department of Transportation

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