Classification of Emergency Responses to Fatal Traffic Accidents in Chinese Urban Areas

Fatal traffic accidents in urban areas can adversely affect the urban road traffic system and pose many challenges for urban traffic management.Therefore,it is necessary to first classify emergency responses to such accidents and then handle them quickly and correctly.The aim of this paper is to develop an evaluation index system and to use appropriate methods to investigate emergency-response classifications to fatal traffic accidents in Chinese urban areas.This study used a multilevel hierarchical structural model to determine emergency-response classification.In the model,accident attributes,urban road network vulnerability,and institutional resilience were used as classification criteria.Each evaluation indicator was selected according to importance ranking and independence screening and was given an interpretation and a quantitative criterion.The Fuzzy Delphi Method was used to rank the importance of the evaluation indices and the combined weight of each index was calculated using the G1 method.Finally,the case of a fatal traffic accident was used to validate the model.The results showed that the multilevel hierarchical structural model,Fuzzy Delphi Method,and G1 method can effectively address the problem of emergency-response classification.Because of its simplicity and adaptability,the approach presented here could be useful for decisionmakers and practitioners for determining emergency-response classifications.