Development of Composite Road Safety Risk Indices Through Multicriteria Weighting and Spatial Analysis

Abstract

Road safety is a fundamental component of sustainable urban mobility, requiring transportation systems that support safe, efficient, and evidence-based territorial planning. Although traffic safety is commonly evaluated using individual indicators, their isolated application often limits comprehensive territorial assessments and intervention prioritization. This study proposes a spatial decision-support framework for sustainable transportation planning based on composite risk indices, multicriteria weighting, and geographic analysis. Official traffic crash records from Ecuador for 2025 were analyzed at the cantonal level to develop three complementary indices representing crash severity, spatial risk, and hotspot concentration. The methodology integrated demographic exposure, territorial exposure, crash frequency, fatalities, injuries, victims, fatal crashes, nighttime crashes, and severity indicators. Variables were normalized using the Min–Max method and aggregated through theoretical and entropy-based weighting schemes. The robustness of the proposed framework was assessed through sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo simulation with 1000 iterations, and Spearman rank correlation analysis. Results showed very high-ranking agreement between theoretical and entropy-based rankings (ρ = 0.993 for severity, ρ = 0.993 for spatial risk, and ρ = 0.965 for hotspot concentration), indicating the stability of territorial prioritization across alternative weighting schemes. The proposed framework provides a transferable tool for sustainable mobility planning and road safety management.