A COMPARISON OF BAYESIAN AND FREQUENTIST APPROACHES FOR THE CASE OF ACCIDENT AND SAFETY ANALYSIS, AS A PRECEPT FOR ALL AI EXPERT MODELS

Abstract

Statistical modelling techniques are widely used in accident studies. It is a well-known fact that frequentist statistical approach includes hypothesis testing, correlations, and probabilistic inferences. Bayesian networks, which belong to the set of advanced AI techniques, perform advanced calculations related to diagnostics, prediction and causal inference. The aim of the current work is to present a comparison of Bayesian and Regression approaches for safety analysis. For this, both advantages and disadvantages of two modelling approaches were studied. The results indicated that the precision of Bayesian network was higher than that of the ordinal regression model. However, regression analysis can also provide understanding of the information hidden in data. The two approaches may suggest different significant explanatory factors/causes, and this always should be taken into consideration. The obtained outcomes from this analysis will contribute to the existing literature on safety science and accident analysis.