Using Geovisual Analytics for Determining Mitigation Technique Against Wildlife Vehicle Collisions

Animal movement data is becoming increasingly accessible with cheaper and lightweight GPS technology (Thomas et al. 2011) and as a result, has had an increase in movement data being collected (Enguehard 2011). Animal movement data can be extremely important in making informed decisions about landscape design, improving environmental conditions, farming practices, and city layout (Benke et al. 2012, Andrienko et al. 2011, Moore et al. 2013). Animal tracking data can be analyzed and visualized through geovisualization that can help inform policymakers, conservation scientists, and the general public (Krisp 2006). One significant problem, especially in the US, is Wildlife Vehicle Collisions (WVC). WVC is a growing problem with human expansion and the number of vehicles on the road. An increasing percentage of accidents on the road are due to WVC (fhwa.dot.gov 2008). There are methods to prevent or reduce the number of collisions, and examples include wildlife fencing, wildlife underpasses, large culverts, long bridges, and wildlife overpasses (fhwa.dot.gov 2008). Each one of these methods has pros and cons but the major issues with deploying these methods are cost and knowing where to deploy them. The goal of this project is to create a geovisualization tool that transportation agencies can use to display wildlife movement and WVC data and that will give insight on where to employ these methods to reduce WVC’s.