Data Sources for Open Road Risk

Last updated: 2026-07-04 · Data coverage: 2015–2024.

This project combines collision, traffic, road-network, and contextual datasets to estimate road risk relative to exposure. Each source has a distinct role: some define the road network, some provide observed outcomes, and others provide traffic or contextual predictors used by the Open Road Risk modelling approach.

How the sources fit together

Source	Main role	Used for	Key limitation
STATS19 collision data	Collision outcome data	Observed injury collisions used as the response variable in the collision model	Police-reported injury collisions only; excludes damage-only incidents
OS Open Roads network data	Road network geometry	Base road-link network for snapping, feature generation, and scoring	Simplified representation of real-world road layout
AADF traffic counts	Observed traffic counts	Training data for estimating annual average daily traffic where direct counts are unavailable	Sparse coverage, especially away from major roads
WebTRIS sensor data	Traffic timing and vehicle mix	Time-of-day profiles, traffic composition, and support for exposure features	Biased toward National Highways / major-road sensors
Network Model GDB	Scoped SRN network reference	Source notes and candidate structural features for motorway and trunk A-road links	SRN-only; not the all-road scoring backbone
OpenStreetMap	Supplementary road attributes	Additional tags such as bridge/tunnel or road context where useful	Uneven coverage and tagging consistency
OS Terrain 50	Terrain context	Link-level grade features derived from the 50 m elevation grid	Bare-earth DTM; no structure correction currently applied, so grade on bridges/tunnels/slip roads may be physically wrong
GB OA population density	Area context	OA-level population-density polygons assigned to road links by centroid	Area-level proxy, not direct road use
ONS 2021 Rural-Urban Classification	Area context	Urban/rural context joined at LSOA level	LSOA-level classification, not road-specific land use
GB deprivation context	Deprivation context	Within-country overall, income, and employment deciles joined by LSOA/Data Zone polygons	England/Wales/Scotland indices are separate relative rankings; contextual, not causal

Source roles in the model

Outcome source

STATS19 collision data provides the observed collision outcome.

Network source

OS Open Roads network data defines the scored road-link network.
Network Model GDB is retained as a scoped Strategic Road Network reference and candidate structural-feature source, not as the all-road backbone.

Exposure sources

AADF traffic counts provide direct traffic-count training examples.
WebTRIS sensor data provides time-profile and vehicle-mix information.

Context sources

OSM, OS Terrain 50, ONS/NRS population context, ONS Rural-Urban Classification, and GB deprivation context provide supporting road and local-context features.

Detailed pages

Next: How the sources are joined