THE WELS-WEATHER PREDICTION SYSTEM

The WELS-System is a PC-based, originally American weather prediction scheme, specifically designed for winter highway maintenance operations. It is currently in real time operational use at a variety of US locations; in Austria it is being employed by the Viennse road maintenance service and by the aviation service. The heart of the system is a graphical user interface (GUI), a user interactive, graphics based and easy to handle tool, consisting of a geographical information system (GIS) which allows the display of roads, rivers, lakes, state borders and various terrain characteristics (elevation, slope and azimuth). Included are a number of manipulation facilities, e.g. the suppression of selected height intervals to visualize road segments located above a predicted snow level. The meteorological subsystem is utilized to display, overlapping the terrain information, the output of an independent numerical model, which delivers twice daily 24 hour predictions of surface temperature, moisture, wind and precipitation (rainfall amount and/or depth of new snow). Artifical intelligence-related techniques incorporated in the GUI permit to assimilate the forecast model's output to locally generated observations. If at a certain time the current on-site temperature is for instance observed to be lower than predicted by the model, the forecast from that time till the end of the prediction period can be easily adjusted in order to be in agreement with the latest measurement. Such a user intervention may automatically alter the form of the predicted precipitation from rain to snow or vice versa.

• Corporate Authors:

  PTRC Education and Research Services Limited

  Glenthorne House, Hammersmith Grove
  London W6OL9,   England 
• Authors:
  • Steinacker, R
  • Spreitzhofer, G
• Conference:
  • Xth PIARC International Winter Road Congress
  • Location: Lulea, Sweden
  • Date: 1998-3-16 to 1998-3-19
• Publication Date: 1998

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: p. 913-
• Serial:
  • Volume: 3

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Forecasting; Geographic information systems; Highway maintenance; Snow and ice control; Weather forecasting; Winter maintenance
• Subject Areas: Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I62: Winter Maintenance;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00752055
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: Technical Report, Volume 1, Volume 2
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 21 2000 12:00AM