A Comparison of Data Sets Varying in Spatial Accuracy Used to Predict the Occurrence of Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions

Abstract Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) pose a sig-nificant safety and conservation concern in areas where high-traffic roads are situated adjacent to wildlife habitat. Improving transportation safety, accurately planning high-way mitigation, and identifying key habitat linkage areas may all depend on the quality of WVC data collection. Two common approaches to describe the location of WVCs are spatially accurate data derived from global positioning systems (GPS) or vehicle odometer measurements and less accurate road-marker data derived from reference points (e.g., mile-markers or landmarks) along the roadside. In addition, there are two common variable types used to pre-dict WVC locations: (1) field-derived, site-specific mea-surements and (2) geographic information system (GIS)-derived information. It is unclear whether these differen