Faan Chen, Yilin Zhu, Jiacheng Zu, Jingyang Lyu, and Junfeng Yang. 2022. “
Appraising road safety attainment by CRITIC-ELECTRE-FCM: A policymaking support for Southeast Asia.” Transport Policy, 112, Pp. 104-118.
Publisher's VersionAbstractRoad traffic crashes have been a leading cause of death in Southeast Asian countries, which greatly harms the development of countries and affects the livelihood of countless families in this region. In this context, a regular review of road safety attainment is needed to understand why road crashes happen and to better guide the ongoing policymaking and implementation of effective countermeasures as well as next-level strategies. This study introduces an easy-to-use, effective, and systematic methodology for multi-criteria decision-making, CRiteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) - ELimination and Et Choice Translating REality (ELECTRE) - Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) (CRITIC-ELECTRE-FCM). Its purpose is to appraise the road safety attainment of 11 countries in Southeast Asia. Accompanied by the robustness of analyses with other widely used methods, these countries are ranked and grouped into several levels regarding their road safety attainment over the past decade (2009–2018). The findings provide government officials, policymakers, and any stakeholders of these countries with meaningful information (e.g., what has been done well and what has not) and instructive guidance for future action. Overall, the proposed
appraisal system serves as an efficacious policymaking support for countries in the region to review road safety attainment, develop future strategies and policies, and implement safety management.
Faan Chen, Chris P. Nielsen, Jiaorong Wu, and Xiaohong Chen. 2022. “
Examining socio-spatial differentiation under housing reform and its implications for mobility in urban China.” Habitat International, 119, January 2022, Pp. 102498.
Publisher's VersionAbstractHousing reform in socialist China has incurred considerable restructuring and transformation of urban space and society. Yet its specific socio-spatial outcomes have not been fully investigated from the perspective of housing type at the meso- and micro-levels. This study attempts to fill the gap by examining the nature and magnitude of the consequences of housing reform and the corresponding effects on mobility. Specifically, based on census data and a mobility survey, this paper combines statistical breakdowns and structural equation modeling to capture the socio-spatial differentiation of urban structure resulting from housing reform and its influences on individual vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and transportation walking. The results reveal that: (1) different types of housing tend to feature internally homogeneous populations in terms of socio-economic composition and socio-psychological condition, with pronounced
social stratification; (2) residents in different types of housing display dramatically different travel styles, with substantial mobility inequities; (3) social differentiation appears to have spatial determinants; in particular spatial segregation contributes to increasing social exclusion; (4) the effects of spatial and social characteristics on mobility are led by housing type; and (5) individual mobility patterns are shaped by the joint influences of spatial and social dimensions of housing differentiation. The findings contribute to further understanding of socio-spatial differentiation in countries with a transitional housing market, suggesting that the design of land-use policies should recognize their social effects and that urban mobility planning practices should deliver sustainability that serves a diverse population, including in particular disadvantaged groups in public and replacement housing. This study serves as a mirror to observe the urban transition compared to other
political economies and adds additional richness and diversity to the theoretical debates on the issue of socio-spatial differentiation and empirical evidence on residential and mobility inequities across global contexts.
Faan Chen and Adriano Borges Costa. 2022. “
Exploring the causal effects of the built environment on travel behavior: A unique randomized experiment in Shanghai.” Transportation, Pp. 1-31.
Publisher's VersionAbstractExperimental designs have been recognized as the gold standard for establishing causal mechanisms. However, the application of such designs is complicated by factors such as excessive costs, time consumption, ethical concerns, and political impossibility. Nevertheless, the Chinese government’s replacement housing efforts provide a unique randomized experiment for exploring the causal effects of the built environment on travel behavior. Accordingly, based on a large-scale survey on travel patterns under an experimental design in Shanghai, this study employs a two-step modeling approach, involving logit and Tobit models, to identify the built environment’s effects on auto ownership and vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT). We found that transit service improvements play a stronger role in reducing auto-drive than compact and diverse land-use characteristics. Increasing residential and employment density, as well as land-use mix, discourages car ownership, which in turn reduces VKT, but with lower elasticities than transportation system variables. The findings provide additional evidence and referential estimate for how land-use and transport strategies and policies designed to create a compact, mixed-use, and highly accessible built environment can be used in reducing auto driving. This study expands the VKT reduction elasticities’ database regarding the built environment across global spatial contexts, serving as a model for similar studies elsewhere in the world.
Faan Chen, Lin Shi, Yaxin Li, Qilin Wang, Haosen Sun, Xinyu Tang, Jiacheng Zu, and Zhenwei Sun. 2022. “
Measuring road safety achievement based on EWM-GRA-SVD: A decision-making support system for APEC countries.” Knowledge-Based Systems, 25, 109373.
Publisher's VersionAbstractMeasuring road safety achievement through persistent monitoring of subjects, such that they can learn from one another, has been widely encouraged by various countries to support policymaking. In recent decades, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries have been working together to improve road safety, considering it an important constituent and reflection of their economic development. However, no uniform road safety measurement framework is currently available across the APEC. To this end, the current study develops a practical and efficient methodology, namely, the entropy weight method (EWM) – grey relational analysis (GRA) –
singular value decomposition (SVD) (EWM-GRA-SVD), providing government officials and policymakers with a replicable framework for reporting the road safety achievement of countries. The EWM is employed to obtain the weights of the set of indicators, as the weighting inputs of GRA, to form a composite score for ranking, where the SVD is embedded in the GRA for grouping by means of extracting
singular values. Using the proposed model, best-performing and underperforming countries are distinguished, whereby each country could learn from others within their assigned group based on an overview of achievements and progress in road safety over the past decade. The results enable decision-makers and policymakers to develop action plans and consider necessary interventions promptly and effectively.
Jiacheng Zu, Zesheng Peng, and Faan Chen. 2022. “
Overseeing road safety progress using CV-PROMETHEE Ⅱ-JSS: A case study in the EU context.” Expert Systems with Applications, 195, Pp. 116623.
Publisher's VersionAbstractOverseeing road safety progress at regular intervals has and will continue to be advocated as the most promising means to achieve continuous safety improvement. Thus, a scientific approach that can be capable of doing so is disparately required. This study aims to propose a brand-new and efficient methodology for overseeing overall road safety progress at the regional level. To this end, CV-PROMETHEE Ⅱ-JSS, which seamlessly incorporates Coefficient of Variation (CV), Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE), and Joint Singular value decomposition and Semi-discrete decomposition (JSS) in an integrative manner, is developed. Specifically, this is designed to combine the retrospective examination and benchmarking analysis in a comprehensive and systematic framework. Based on the proposed methodology, the road safety development of the European Union (EU) Member States is examined over the past decade (2010–2020), whilst simultaneously benchmarking safety performance looking forward to the next decade (2020–2030). As a result, a detailed picture of changes in road safety for each country is quantitatively depicted, providing policymakers with deeper insights into how progress was achieved. The appropriate benchmarks are also scientifically identified for each laggard member to use as a meaningful reference, which largely avoids the need for reinventing the wheel and trial and error approaches. This study provides the EU27 + 3 countries with a practical paradigm to perform both diagnostics and treatment to improve overall road safety levels in an effective way; supporting the government officials and policymakers in the charting of future strategic directions and intervention priorities, and helping them define ways to accelerate action on proven strategies and policies for better lives. Moreover, this study enriches the existing Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) mechanism by introducing the CV-PROMETHEE Ⅱ-JSS, and implies its feasibility and effectiveness in future MCDM cases involving safety-related issues.