IENE 2016

We summarize our experience with the animal-vehicle collision (AVC) report application www.srazenazver.cz. This tool was launched to cover as many AVC sources as possible in one place. This application is accessible through common web browsers and allows the user to input, edit and browse data accumulated by other users. The data is visualized in the form of a map or table.

Each registered user can add data. Users have several authorizations which are based on their status. Hunter area administrators have higher rights than common users. They are allowed to edit data included within their custody.

Data are continuously and automatically checked to prevent application misuse and determine duplicates. Suspicious records are also sent vie e-mail to the application administrators in an automatically generated weekly report.

We have programmed an online module which utilizes the KDE+ approach to identify locales with AVC concentration (clusters). The clusters are dynamically re-calculated when a new entry comes into the database. The clusters consequently always represent the best option for identifying dangerous places on roads based on the available data. AVC density on road segments is also calculated at the same time. Both values are visualized on a second map view within the application.

As many as 9,136 road kills were recorded over 2015. Only 4,449 (49 %) records had attributed species. The majority of the records belongs to roe deer (67 % of the identified species), followed by wild boar (13 %) and hare (7 %). The reason why 51 % of records had not species identified was caused by the fact that the majority of the records came directly from Police road information generally classified as “animal-vehicle collision”. Only a smaller part of these records had additional information attributed where the species was specified. These data were data-mined by using a full-text analysis.

The value of AVC data stored in the database will rise over time, however. This application is currently the only platform which stores data on AVC from various sources (Police, hunters, volunteers) for the entire Czech Republic. About 5 % of the hunter areas are responsibly administered. Spatial analyses and ecological models are possible to conduct, however, for these parts even at present when data are irregularly distributed throughout the country.

We identified certain problems which limit the use of the application. Only several hundred  hunters are registered and add data regularly. We have identified the three principal reasons why the application is not used by hunters more frequently: the majority of hunters are rather old with a negative view to informatics. They are also not motivated by the Ministry to report the road kills to this application. The current hunter law and associated system of shooting permissions penalizes those who report road kills. Their species shooting limits are lowered by the number of recorded road killed individuals.