The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, will collaborate with the Rajasthan government to help it implement a structured framework for a data-driven system approach to road safety. An MoU for this collaboration was signed recently between the Rajasthan government represented by its Transport Commissioner Ravi Jain and Dean (Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research) of IIT Madras Ravindra Gettu.

The objective of this collaboration is to enhance road safety measures, increase capacity and capability across the board in the Government to both increase the survivability of road accident victims and reduce occurrence rate in the State, says arelease from IIT Madras.

Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, Minister for Transport, Government of Rajasthan, said, “We are extremely delighted to join hands with RBG Labs at IIT Madras to help implement the Tamil Nadu Model of Road Safety and are ever ready to facilitate interactions between the stakeholders of Government of Rajasthan and IIT Madras.”

The key outcomes targeted from this collaboration include building capability of the core road safety team in Rajasthan; help build strategies and implement work packages for all stakeholder departments to realize safe roads in Rajasthan; develop a road map towards reaching the goal of 50 per cent reduction in road fatalities by 2030 and eventually to zero deaths from road accidents and help build a data driven trauma care with institutional registry developed by IIT Madras.

Venkatesh Balasubramanian, Faculty In-Charge, Rehabilitation Bioengineering Group (RBG) Labs, Department of Engineering Design, IIT Madras, said that the engagement will bring benefits to both the partners. With requisite orientation and training programmes, the stakeholders from Rajasthan are expected to develop both capacity and capability. This will be essential in implementing and using the information from the huge road accident data from MoRTH - Integrated Road Accident Database.

Some of the other key projects on road safety taken from the RBG Labs include working with National Health Mission Tamil Nadu to build a unique Trauma Care programme - TAEI (Tamil Nadu Accident and Emergency care Initiative. It also advises in designing and implementing this unique trauma care programme that uses principles of lean manufacturing, he said.

Working with the Tamil Nadu Police, the RBG Labs helped improve the data collection process of road accidents called Road Accident Database Management System. The resultant application - Traffic Accident Reporting App - was geared to have an integrated approach to accident data collection.

Further, the MoRTH adopted this integrated approach for data collection where in-depth data can be simultaneously collected from various domain specialist agencies called iRAD (Integrated Road Accident Database). RBG Labs, IIT Madras and NICSI are currently in the process of developing and implementing nationally, he said.

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