Application of ARIMA Models to Road Traffic Accident Cases in Ghana

Abstract

Road traffic accident cases in Ghana are increasing at a fast rate and this has raised major concerns. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2001) report indicates that about 50 million people are injured on the roads and 1.2 million people are killed each year. This paper applies the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time series model to study the trends and patterns of road traffic accident cases in Ghana as well as makes a five- year forecast. An Annual accident data from 1991 to 2011 was obtained from the National Road Safety Commission and the Building and Road Research Institute in Ghana. The results showed that road traffic accident cases are increasing in Ghana. Models were subsequently developed for accident cases and ARIMA (0,2,1) was identified as the best model. A Five- year forecast was made using the best model and it showed that road traffic accident cases would continue to increase in Ghana.