Present and Future of Practical Road Weather Decision Support Research
Maintaining control of snow and ice buildup on roadway surfaces during winter storms is challenging for road maintenance entities. Some of the critical challenges include making effective and efficient decisions for treatment types and timing of treatments, and knowing the location of greatest impact to the roadway based on precipitation rates and types and other weather conditions. These decisions are critical because of the implications to roadway safety, as well as economic impacts to the agency and the environmental impacts of treatments. In order to mitigate the challenges associated with winter road maintenance, the FHWA under the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) initiated the development of the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) in 1999. MDSS provides a single platform that blends existing road and weather data sources with numerical weather and road condition models in order to provide information on the diagnostic and prognostic state of the atmosphere and roadway (with emphasis on the 1- to 72-h lead time period) as well as a decision support tool for roadway maintenance treatment options. MDSS was engineered with a robust modular design. The flexibility of this design allows for smaller sections of the system to be modified without having to redesign the entire system. Porting MDSS to a decision support system for non-wintertime weather impacts (visibility, flooding, non-winter maintenance, etc.) to the roads is being considered as the next step for this system. Also, customizing modules for other non-DOT user groups (e.g., emergency medical services, school planning, and fleet trucking companies), which are also highly impacted by adverse road weather, is a future direction for this research. This paper gives an overview of the most recent advancements to the federal prototype MDSS system as well as a discussion on the future direction of road weather decision support for not only the road maintenance community but also different user groups that may benefit from better and more useful road weather decision support.
- Record URL:
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Availability:
- Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00978515
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Authors:
- Chapman, Michael B
- Drobot, Sheldon
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Conference:
- International Conference on Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather
- Location: Coralville Iowa, United States
- Date: 2012-4-30 to 2012-5-3
- Publication Date: 2012-4
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Web
- Features: Figures; References;
- Pagination: pp 88-103
- Monograph Title: Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather. International Conference on Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather, April 30–May 3, 2012, Coralville, Iowa
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Serial:
- Transportation Research Circular
- Issue Number: E-C162
- Publisher: Transportation Research Board
- ISSN: 0097-8515
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Decision support systems; Future; Road weather information systems; Winter maintenance
- Identifier Terms: Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS)
- Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I62: Winter Maintenance;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01371243
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: WM-STW12-164
- Files: TRIS, TRB
- Created Date: May 25 2012 10:32AM