Evaluation of simulation uncertainty in accident reconstruction via combining Response Surface Methodology and Monte Carlo Method

This paper focuses on the uncertainty of simulation results in accident reconstruction. Since the Monte Carlo Method (MCM) requires a large number of simulation runs, in order to reduce the simulation time of MCM in evaluating the uncertainty of simulation results, a new method named “Response Surface-Monte Carlo Method (RS-MCM)” was proposed. Firstly, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to obtain an approximate model of the true accident simulation model, and then the uncertainty of simulation results was evaluated by combining this approximate model and MCM. The steps of RS-MCM include the generation of sample sets, the determination of response surface model and the statistical analysis of simulation results. The distribution of reconstruction results was obtained using RS-MCM, which can provide more comprehensive information in traffic accident survey, such as the probability of a simulation result at any given confidence interval falling within an arbitrary interval and so on. Finally, three cases have been employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed RS-MCM.