Multi-criteria analysis for evaluating the function and location of roadside rest areas to improve disaster preparedness

The roadside rest area (RRA), called “Michi no eki” in Japanese, is a facility that provides comfortable rest and diverse services to road users through community initiatives. There are many RRAs developed since its first establishment in 1993. It is important to identify the RRAs and regions where a certain function is weak, so as to build more substantial RRAs in the future. In this research, we divided the RRA functions into four categories, rest, information, regional collaboration, and disaster prevention, and listed their evaluation items. By checking the performance of RRAs in terms of the four functions, we can evaluate whether their performance can be improved by sharing functions with or complementing neighboring RRAs. We then calculated the evaluation results. During the evaluation, we compared two types of cases: one where the RRA was evaluated alone and the other where overlay evaluation was performed. The latter considered the distance among RRAs so that a complementary relationship with others could be expressed. Furthermore, we devised a method to calculate the impact of RRAs on an area and evaluate the region for this. By applying these methods, we were able to answer the question: “Where and for what functions are roadside rest areas needed?"