One main function of the monitoring centre is to gather and process road accidents data for the Piedmont municipalities. Currently carried out at the national level by ISTAT, the Italian bureau of statistics, this function is progressively involving regional and sub-regional institutions.
The following scheme shows the information flows describing road accidents. It points out the main data category and information sources. Two major requirements for the accounting of accident events are emphasized:

• the need to properly refer an event to the context where it occurred. Each event, therefore, should be spatially located and geo-referenced (GR)

• the need to have a convenient identifier (ID) in order to make it possible to merge an accident event by the other information provided by hospitals and insurances.

The scheme also indicates that several information sources are involved in collecting data about road accidents. The link among these sources is a primary requisite for setting up complete and relevant databases. Seeing to the permanent updating of the information flows is an additional effort to be undertaken in order to make effective the centre's monitoring function.
This calls for a coordination of all the institutions currently involved in gathering road data accidents in order to improve the efficiency and outcome of this function at the societal level.
Such a coordination is not effortless and would benefit of general guidelines set at national level as well as of the experience gained by the regional and sub-regional monitoring initiatives.
The monitoring centre aims to set up a gathering data procedure based on a shared protocol supported by the use of up-to-date information communication technologies. In order to assure its inter institutional consistency, attention will be paid at coordinating this activity with those undertaken by other Italian Regions, the national Ministries and by ISTAT.