Cluster analysis of the spatial distribution of pedestrian deaths and injuries by parishes in Kampala city, Uganda

Abstract

Studies on pedestrian deaths and injuries at the urban level in Africa mostly provide overall aggregated figures and do not examine variation in the sub-urban units. Using cluster analysis, this study sought to determine if the observed pattern in the distribution of pedestrian injuries and deaths among parishes in Kampala city is significant. Pedestrian crash data from 2015 to 2019 were collected from the Uganda Traffic Police database. Serious and fatal pedestrian injury rates were mapped by parish using ArcMap and cluster analyses conducted. Results from spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s Index of 0.18 and 0.17 for fatal and serious injury rates respectively) showed that the distributions were clustered within parishes crossed by highways and located in the inner city respectively. Z-scores of 3.32 (p < 0.01) for serious injury rates and 3.71 (p < 0.01) for fatal injury rates indicated that the clustering was not random. This study’s main contribution was providing a detailed spatial distribution of pedestrian fatal and serious injury rates for Kampala; a city in a low developing country in Africa at the micro-scale of a parish. This foundational exploratory paper formed the first step of a broader study examining built environment factors explaining this pattern.

Keywords:

• Road traffic crashes
• pedestrian injuries
• pedestrian deaths
• Kampala-Uganda
• spatial analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Dr. Olive Kobusingye for obtaining funding to conduct the study. The authors thank Dr. Khayesi Meleckidzedeck as well as the staff at the Uganda Traffic Police especially Assistant Inspector General of Police, Bettinah Nalugo; the Statistician at the Uganda Police Force, and the Officers-in-Charge of the police stations as well as the traffic police officers for their support during the planning and data collection phases of the study. The authors are indebted to the staff of the Kampala Capital City Authority Geographic Information System department as well as the engineering department for their support in obtaining necessary data on Kampala city. The authors thank Mr. Ivan Bamweyana and Mr. Steven Owundo for their help with map quality.

Authors’ contributions

EBZ conceptualized the study as well as carried out the data collection, analysis and writing the original manuscript draft. DG and MM supervised the study as well as reviewed the manuscript. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

Availability of data and materials

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Research department of the Uganda police but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of the Uganda police. Requests to access these datasets should be directed to https://www.upf.go.ug.

Competing interests

The authors report no financial or non-financial conflict of interest

Disclosure statement

I, Esther Bayiga Zziwa, do hereby declare that all the work presented is my own original work unless otherwise acknowledged. It has never been presented either in part or in full publication.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All methods were performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Approval to conduct the study was obtained from the Makerere University School of Public Health Research and Ethics committee As per national guidelines, this research was cleared by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology under protocol number: HS960ES. In addition, permission to abstract secondary traffic crash data was also obtained from the research department of the Uganda Police. Codes were given to each crash record so that information could not be traced back to individual crashes. Data was only accessible to the research team to ensure privacy, confidentiality and safety.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant (# VN 81204847) from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the Collaboration for evidence-based healthcare and public health in Africa (CEBHA+) under Makerere University School of Public Health. The corresponding author was a Ph.D. student under the CEBHA + project.