Multi-Solving Safety Approach - Stepping Away from Silos to Achieve a Safer System

The safe system approach (SSA) incorporates various stakeholders to coordinate, engage, and implement solutions that address safer roads, safer road users, and community goals in tandem. The SSA requires stakeholders to think differently, with emphasis on system solutions made by multiple disciplines working together. To implement this way of thinking, stakeholder engagement requires evolution. Committee structures, conversations, and outcomes can be re-framed to better achieve multidisciplinary solutions for the system. In addition, recent dialogue related to SSA implementation has created a divide on the value of improving the built environment versus changes to human behavior. These two are not mutually exclusive and stakeholder engagement can be structured to move away from this way of thinking if advanced by a “multi-solving” approach. Multi-solving is a well-known phrase in the climate and health sectors. It is a way of solving multiple problems with a single investment of time and money by bringing together stakeholders from different sectors and disciplines to address issues in a cost-efficient manner. Multi-solving research has focused on developing and framing interventions that can simultaneously address climate change and public health goals or exploit leverage points to change complex systems by influencing outcomes that matter to key players in the system. However, by applying multi-solving within transportation safety, engagement can be framed to identify integrated behavioral and engineering solutions at a system level that solves multiple problems and benefits various road users, areas, and stakeholders. The objective of this research is to help redefine stakeholder engagement during the development of safety plans, interventions, programs, projects, and policies so outcomes focus on multi-solving decision-making and implementation. The desired outcomes are to develop a guide to promote and facilitate diverse, cross-sectoral groups to collaborate on multi-solving decision-making and implementation. 

• Record URL:
  http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=5389

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $500000
• Contract Numbers:

  Project BTS-24

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Behavioral Traffic Safety Cooperative Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  Governors Highway Safety Association

  444 N. Capitol Street, NW, Suite 722
  Washington, DC  United States  20001

  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, D.C.  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Retting, Richard

• Performing Organizations:

  Iowa State University, Ames

  Institute for Transportation
  2711 South Loop Drive, Suite 4700
  Ames, Iowa  United States  50010-8664
• Principal Investigators:

  Shaw, John

• Start Date: 20231005
• Expected Completion Date: 20261005
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cooperation; Decision making; Highway safety; Plan implementation; Stakeholders; Transportation planning
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01852498
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project BTS-24
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 21 2022 12:53PM