The MAST Online analytical tool is undergoing an extensive overhaul which will “dramatically improve” the way that data is presented to users.
Currently celebrating its fifth anniversary, MAST Online is a tool for analysing road casualty trends and the impact of residence, social and demographic factors on casualty rates. The majority of UK local authority highway authorities use MAST to plan, develop and evaluate road safety interventions.
The key element of the revamp is a new MAST Dashboard which, rather than presenting a single table or chart, combines maps, charts and graphs to provide a simpler at a glance summary of the subject being analysed.
When it was first launched in September 2009, MAST revolutionised access to information through a web-based front end which could be used by road safety practitioners as well as experienced analysts.
However, Richard Owen, operations director at Road Safety Analysis, the company behind MAST, says the local authority road safety environment is much changed in the past five years, with fewer data analysts in post.
Richard Owen said: “Essentially, we are bringing MAST back to basics.
“Five years ago the world of local authority road safety was very different with hundreds of trained analysts used to operating complex systems and with good background knowledge of STATS19.
“Since then the picture has changed with fewer data analysts, and we’ve developed MAST Dashboard to ensure that MAST members can get to the answers more quickly.
“MAST Dashboard is also more focussed on local areas and will feature robust comparison tools so people can see how they perform compared to similar authorities, which we hope will assist in collaboration.”
The rollout of the MAST Dashboard is expected to take place over 18 months, with the first dashboards scheduled for release in late 2014.
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