Modeling the severity of accidents based on the most effective variables accounts for developing a high-precision model presenting the possibility of occurrence of each category of future accidents, and it could be utilized to prioritize the corrective measures for authorities. The purpose of this study is to identify the variables affecting the severity of the injury, fatal, and property damage only (PDO) accidents in Rasht city by collecting information on urban accidents from March 2019 to March 2020. In this regard, the multiple logistic regression and the pattern recognition type of artificial neural network (ANN) as a machine learning solution are used to recognize the most influential variables on the severity of accidents and the superior approach for accident prediction. Results show that the multiple logistic regression in the forward stepwise method has R2 of 0.854 and an accuracy prediction power of 89.17%. It turns out that the accidents occurred between 18 and 24 and KIA Pride vehicle has the highest effect on increasing the severity of accidents, respectively. The most important result of the logit model accentuates the role of environmental variables, including poor lighting conditions alongside unfavorable weather and the dominant role of unsafe and poor quality of vehicles on increasing the severity of accidents. In addition, the machine learning model performs significantly better and has higher prediction accuracy (98.9%) than the logit model. In addition, the ANN model’s greater power to predict and estimate future accidents is confirmed through performance and sensitivity analysis.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate and determine the factors affecting vehicle and pedestrian accidents taking place in the busiest suburban highway of Guilan Province located in the north of Iran and provide the most accurate prediction model. Therefore, the effective principal variables and the probability of occurrence of each category of crashes are analyzed and computed utilizing the factor analysis, logit, and Machine Learning approaches simultaneously. This method not only could contribute to achieving the most comprehensive and efficient model to specify the major contributing factor, but also it can provide officials with suggestions to take effective measures with higher precision to lessen accident impacts and improve road safety. Both the factor analysis and logit model show the significant roles of exceeding lawful speed, rainy weather and driver age (30–50) variables in the severity of vehicle accidents. On the other hand, the rainy weather and lighting condition variables as the most contributing factors in pedestrian accidents severity, underline the dominant role of environmental factors in the severity of all vehicle-pedestrian accidents. Moreover, considering both utilized methods, the machine-learning model has higher predictive power in all cases, especially in pedestrian accidents, with 41.6% increase in the predictive power of fatal accidents and 12.4% in whole accidents. Thus, the Artificial Neural Network model is chosen as the superior approach in predicting the number and severity of crashes. Besides, the good performance and validation of the machine learning is proved through performance and sensitivity analysis.

The operating condition of bus transit system has not been efficient in most cities of Iran, and many management methods such as regular bus scheduling, assigning exclusive bus lanes, etc., which are necessary for increasing the efficiency of this system, were not regarded enough. Thus, achieving a method for locating the bus stops and optimizing the number of such stops based on a non-homogeneous spatial and temporal distribution of passengers as well as the local traffic patterns are important to be investigated. As such, the present study aims to investigate the modeling of a bus transit system corridor according to the non-homogeneous spatial and temporal distribution of passengers throughout the route aiming at optimization of the number of attracted passengers to the bus. For this purpose, the 8-km route from Vali-e-asr roundabout to Gas roundabout in the city of Rasht in the north of Iran is selected for modeling. Hammersley sampling method, as well as two heuristic optimization techniques, including a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, are used for generating a non-uniform population and solving the optimization model. Therefore, the results of this analysis are compared to the optimization results by using the probabilistic analysis without considering the reference uncertainty. Finally, the PSO is selected as the superior algorithm for modeling and locating the bus stops due to its results in less travel time, and the validity of robust optimization model is shown due to its higher accuracy and adaptation to the real-world environment. Overall, although the optimization results based on indeterminate analysis in comparison to determinate analysis brought about more average travel time, more population sets were covered by the new introduced stops during 18 active hours of the bus transit system.

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