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Developing Pedestrian Safety Data Visualization and Analysis Tool for RITI Communities

The research team has been well aware of the outstanding traffic safety challenges and issues of the rural, tribal, isolated or indigenous (RITI) communities, and one such issue is pedestrian safety. The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation is one of the federally recognized tribe in Washington state. Located on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, the Yakama Nation is the second largest Native American reservation in the state with about 1,372,000 acres of land. Within the Yakama Nation reservation, there are approximately 1,200 miles of public roads. Most of the roads are in rural agricultural settings and crashes happen every day on these roadways. Of the land governed by Tribal Governments, Yakama Nation has the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in Washington State. Around hundreds of injuries and more than twenty deaths have occurred in the last ten years on US-97 alone in the reservation, according to the Yakama Nation Tribal agency. The research team have conducted a site visit to Yakama Nation and several teleconferences with engineers and planners of the Yakama Nation DNR Engineering department and recognized the pressing needs to improve pedestrian safety conditions. Despite the urgent needs to improve pedestrian safety conditions, the Yakama Nation lacks the necessary tools to store, manage, visualize, and analyze the pedestrian safety data and support decision making. This proposal aims to develop the pedestrian safety data tool specializing to the needs of the RITI communities, which will benefit many government agencies and transportation practitioners that are facing similar issues as the Yakama Nation.