Considering undesirable variables in PCA-DEA method: a case of road safety evaluation in Iran

This paper presents a deterministic approach for performance assessment of different province’s road safety level at Iran. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) model considering undesirable input and output indices and a multivariate statistical method, principle component analysis (PCA) are used in this paper, while previous studies do not use composite PCA-DEA method and undesirable input and output indices simultaneously. PCA is used to improve discrimination power of DEA and making variables as independent as possible to avoid overlapping of decision making units (DMU’s) information. The advantage of the proposed approach is benchmarking the most unsafe roads to allocate bounded road safety public budget in the best manner while considering undesirable output and input variables simultaneously.