An efficiency indicator for micromobility safety assessment

Micromobility has been revealed as one of the effective solutions in urban areas for mitigating emissions as well as private car usage. However, the choice to travel by micromobility has been often limited due to safety risks. For this reason, we proposed an indicator that evaluates the safety-based efficiency of urban areas zones, related to micromobility and based on a Data Envelopment Analysis model. An efficiency value between zero and one is associated with each zone of the studied area. This value is calculated as a function of micromobility accident-related factors such as road intersections, vehicles speed, and the presence of cycleways. Based on this efficiency indicator and a proposed decision support system, local public authorities can take actions to mitigate the risk of accidents with infrastructure improvements or by enforcing reduced speed limits, for example through the use of geofencing in shared micromobility systems. The proposed indicator and the decision support system have been applied to the city of Bari, Italy, also performing sensitivity analyses on the methodology parameters. The obtained results show how our proposal can help decision-makers to set up necessary actions for improving micromobility safety for specific cities zones.