Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ (IIT Madras) Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) has launched a landmark ‘Data Driven Hyperlocal Intervention’ (DDHI) programme to address road crashes across India.
Taken up under the aegis of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), this initiative prioritises 100 districts identified as high accident-burden zones through comprehensive analysis of national crash data.
The DDHI alignment session-cum-launch event was organised at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on Tuesday (20 May 2025) with the presence of leaders and officials from Central and State Governments besides districts.
According to the MoRTH’s “Road Accidents in India 2022” report, 4,61,312 reported accidents resulted in 1,68,491 fatalities and 4,43,366 injuries. While many of these accidents were attributed to human error, a significant proportion are due to localised challenges.
The top 100 districts have been prioritised for intervention to address these challenges. The approach will be tailored to the local needs of each district and aligned with the CoERS’s 5E model of road safety – Engineering, Enforcement, Education, Emergency Care, and Empathy.
This initiative will adopt a bottom-up approach, empowering District Road Safety Councils (DRSCs), led by the respective chairperson, to lead decision-making and implementation. The DDHI framework empowers councils to design targeted interventions tailored to district-specific road conditions, behavioural patterns, and geographical constraints.
CoERS has collaborated closely with MoRTH and State Governments to develop a scalable, evidence-based strategy, underpinned by data from the electronic Detailed Accident Report (eDAR), formerly known as the Integrated Road Accident Database (iRAD), and powered by Sanjaya, a location intelligence platform launched by Shri Nitin Gadkari, Hon’ble Minister for Road Transport and Highways.
Key Objectives of the DDHI Programme include:
- Build capacity and capability within selected districts.
- Empower district leadership to identify and implement critical road safety interventions.
- Enable sustainable, low-cost, high-impact solutions that are community-informed and data-backed.
- Establish a scientific impact assessment and review mechanism for the interventions taken up.
- Create a repository of best practices and learnings resulting from DDHI for other districts to learn and replicate.
Some of the tools and frameworks that CoERS will provide to DRSCs include:
- Sanjaya Dashboard – a comprehensive crash visualisation and planning tool to perform interventions.
- Field Perception Survey (FPS) – a grassroots data collection app to identify perceived road safety hotspots.
- Trauma Care Preparedness Level (TPL) – an assessment app to evaluate and plan for emergency care infrastructure and readiness.
