Neighborhood level pedestrian injury surveillance: Using GIS as a platform for merging multiple datasets for small scale surveillance

Background/Purpose

Pedestrian crash injuries result in disability and death, and are a significant public health concern. Data available on pedestrian injuries at the state, county, and even city-level are too broad for individual neighborhoods to use for prevention strategy planning. The purpose of this project was to determine injury risk at the neighborhood level for the city of Newark, NJ by integrating multiple data sources.

Methods

Data was gathered from multiple sources, including the Newark Board of Education (student enrollment, school location), the US Census (population estimates, motor vehicle estimates, roads), the NJDEP (city boundaries, land use), the NJDOT (pedestrian crash locations), and the NJTC (injury severity for all records that could be matched to police crash reports or with known crash locations) and was merged using ArcGIS v. 10. Neighborhoods were defined as any overlapping area within a quarter mile radius of a public elementary school. Risk was determined based on pedestrian injury incidence weighted by population and roads.

Results/Outcomes

Using a quarter mile radius surrounding elementary school locations, 14 distinct neighborhoods were identified in Newark, representing the residential areas of the city. Neighborhood specific pedestrian injury incidence ranged from 5 to 26 injuries/ 1,000 residents, 0 to 2.5 clinically severe injuries /1,000 residents, and 3 to 11 injuries/ mile of road, identifying areas in need of prevention.

Conclusions

Neighborhood-centric surveillance is valuable for highlighting high risk areas which can be overlooked when looking at large scale rates. Our method generated residential areas of concern that could be overlooked in traditional “hot-spot” mapping.