In the project an analysis of failures and faults will be carried out on the basis of data from technical inspections of road vehicles.
The objectives of the project are based on the requirements from the call of proposals:
1.) Collecting data on the number of performed technical inspections of road vehicles at individual contractors.
2.) Estimation of the vechicles with no failures or faults for each contractor.
3.) Determination of the three most frequent failures or faults detected at technical inspections.
4.) Analysing failure data for different regions of Slovenia.
5.) Analysing failure data for the contractors.
In the project primary and secondary objectives are defined. Primari objectives are: i.) for a period of two consecutive years the number of technical inspections for each road-vehicle category is determined; ii.) analysis of vehicle's techical adequacy and detected failures is carried out; iii.) a comparison with a developed western country (i.e. Germany, because a lot of the relevant data is publically available) is made. By meeting the primary objectives an ensemble of recommendations can be set up in order to improve technical adequacy of slovenian vehicles.
The secondary objective is a comparative analysis of failure distributions for the Slovenian regions and contrators, which are allowed to perform technical inspections of road vehicles. If significant discrepancies are found, recommendations for their reductions will be defined.
To meet the project objectives the project activities are divided into six phases that are performed in a logical sequence with a certain overlapping:
1.) Initial acquisition of data on road-vehicle technical inspections from the contractors.
2.) Analysis of the initial data set and search for the missing and incomplete data.
3.) Definition of recommendations and methods for improving input-data quality.
4.) Acquisition of data for the final statistical analysis and data mining.
5.) Intermediate and final data analysis.
6.) Dissemination of project results.
In the initial project phases the quality of data on mechanical failures and faults , which are gathered from the contractors, will be estimated. Due to a big amount of data that are acquired from a number of different sources some issues related to the missing or incomplete data are expected. If the data quality varies among the different contractors the outcomes of the statistical analysis may not be reliable. For this reason it is important that a procedures and methodologies are developed that will enable adequate treatment of samples with missing or incomplete data.
The acquired data on road-vehicle mechanical failures and faults Will be then analysed with different conventional statistical and unconventiona data mining methods. Further on statistical discrepancies of detected failures and faults will be analysed on the regional- and contractor-wise basis. In this manner local peculiarities related to the vehicle age spectrum will be identified. Contractor-based data will be compared for different regions and Slovenia as a whole country to identify significant differences, if they exist. If significant differencis do exist we will try to find the root casue with aditional analyses.
The final results from data analyses on the road-vehicle failure data will be compared with publically available data from the developed western country (Germany). Similarity of the technical-failure distribution and vehicle's age-related failures will be estimated.
The following results, which are related to the primary objectives, will be available at the end of the project:
- The state of the technical inspections in Republic of Slovenia will be identified for two consecutive years.
- The state of road-vehicle technical adequacy will be identified for the complete vehicle-age spectrum. Typical failures and faults will be correlated to the vehicle's age.
- A comparison of vehicle state with Germany will be available from two aspects: technical adequacy and vegicle-age spectrum.
- If significant discrepancies of road-vehicle's technical adequacy are identified, the corresponding corrective actions will be defined.
Further results, which are related to the secondary objectives, will be available at the end of the project:
- A comparison of road-vehicle's technical adequacy among the Slovenian regions will be available.
- A comparison of detected technical failures and faults for different contractors will be available. This comparison will also indicate the contractor's quality-level of technical inspections.
- If significant discrepancies between the contractors are identified the corrective actions for reducing the deviations will be defined.
In parallel to the data-processing activities a dissemination of the project results will be performed. Intermediate and final reports will be sent to the involved agencies on a regular basis. The results of the statistical analyses and data mining will be published in scientific articles and presented at international conferences. A procedure for further data acquisition and archivind will be defined. If needed a workshop for the contractors that are performing road-vehicle technical inspections will be organised to present them the project outcomes.
The project outcomes will have a straight and important meaning for the whole society. The project results, which will be based on different statistical analyses (including the data mining), will be applied for a definition of activities that will result in a reduction of vehicle deficiencies and faults. This will direcly lead to the increased trafiic safety in a road transport. Such an influence is a basic objective of every developed society from the standpoint of both, social and economic aspects. According to some estimates the GDP loss due to the traffic accidents can reach 3% of GDP in developed countries and up to 5% in under-developed countries.
