The Project SAFER

The focus of the project is the question of how routes to school can be made safer - with the help of modern mathematical optimisation and taking road safety aspects into account.

SAFER aims to develop intelligent route planning that not only takes into account the shortest route, but also safety aspects and the quality of the route. Particular attention is paid to the evaluation of crossing points such as zebra crossings, traffic lights or central islands.

In contrast to conventional navigation systems, SAFER does not simply weight these criteria, but treats them as equally important, (sometimes) contradictory objectives. Another challenge here is that the safety assessment is based on an ordinal scale - i.e. a ranking, not a measurable quantity. This results in a new type of ordinal optimisation problem, on the basis of which trade-offs between shorter and safer routes can be systematically analysed. In this way, well-founded compromise solutions can be determined.