Wildlife & Traffic
10 Maintenance of ecological assets on transport linear infrastructure
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Contents
Management of Animal-Vehicle Collisions (AVC) data
DATA COLLECTION
To check
- Recording of the following data for any roadkill is undertaken, by providing field crews with suitable training and equipment
- • Collision date, and time if known.
- • Location: coordinates, road code and kilometer point.
- • Species involved, sex and age class, if known.
- • Any information which helps to explain AVC occurrence related to landscape (presence of rivers, nearby housing, etc.) or infrastructure features (fencing, road verges issues, garbage containers, etc.).
- A cooperative procedure with other organisations recording data related to AVC is established to develop a comprehensive database which will improve knowledge of AVC hotspots, helping to define solutions. Relevant organisations include:
- • Traffic police and insurance companies could provide information on injury and/or damage accidents involving large animals.
- • Research centres and NGOs, among others, could provide information on small road killed animals.
DATA MANAGEMENT AND AVC MITIGATION
To do
- Undertake analyses to identify where and when hotspots occurl
- Provide statistical analyses of the data collected which outlines seasonal, annual and location variations in AVC numbers.
- Use a roadkill clustering method to identify hotspots where AVC occur in high frequency (e.g. KDE+ or any other which has the possibility to define a frequency threshold goal) and link it to an app/web-based system managing the AVC database.
- Perform analyses for particular target species or group of species (e.g. endangered species or large animals which pose a major risk to drivers).
- Use maps to visualize the location of AVC hotspots and provide data from different periods of the year.
- Identify where and when AVC hotspots are occurring along road sections over time.
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Identify causes and provide solutions to reduce AVC risk - Identify local factors related to landscape, infrastructure features or human activities which could influence AVC clustering involving different species, to assist in the investigation of why hotspots occur.
- Define the most effective mitigation measures to be applied in hotspot areas based on causes analysed. Factors which go beyond the routine maintenance of the road require ecology expert assessment.
- Undertake monitoring before and after mitigation to ensure measures have reduced AVC numbers.
SCHEDULE
- Periodic data analyses should be planned according to the frequency and variation of the AVC hotspot along road sections, at least once every 5 years.
Maintenance of ecological assets on transport linear infrastructure