On April 2, 2025, Johannes Frank was honored by the VDI Rheingau Regional Chapter for his outstanding master’s thesis titled “Analysis of Factors Influencing Accident Severity Using AI and XAI.” The thesis was supervised by Klaus Böhm, who was assisted by his research associate and doctoral candidate Cédric Roussel.
View from the dashboard
In this thesis, Johannes Frank addressed a highly relevant topic in traffic safety, utilizing modern technologies—in particular artificial intelligence, visual analytics, and approaches to Explainable AI (XAI)—to make it clear why AI models make certain decisions. As part of his master’s thesis, Frank developed a powerful machine learning model that classifies the severity of traffic accidents based on publicly available accident data. He enriched the data with contextual information, such as road class from OpenStreetMap, and was thus able to significantly improve the quality of the predictions. To make AI—often criticized as a “black box”—more understandable, he relied on Explainable AI, specifically the SHAP method. Last but not least, he developed an interactive dashboard that visually presents the classifications and explains them using maps and numbers.
Frank impressively combines analytical thinking, technical implementation, and creative visualization. The results of his work have already been incorporated into a current research project, where they form the basis for a planned scientific publication.
At his new employer, the Ministry of the Interior and Sports in Rhineland-Palatinate, he holds a newly created AI staff position, where he is working on an AI strategy for the Ministry of the Interior. We extend our warmest congratulations to Johannes and wish him continued success!
