Tomorrow’s Forecast: Informed Drivers

The transportation community is well on its way toward the development of wireless vehicle capabilities where vehicles communicate with other vehicles and the road infrastructure to improve safety and mobility and to reduce environmental impacts. In the near future, it will be possible for millions of vehicles to anonymously collect direct (e.g., temperature) and indirect (e.g., wiper status) measurements of the road and atmospheric conditions in their immediate surroundings. This will greatly expand the current weather observation network, particularly in respect to the roadway environment. However, the volume and anonymity of vehicle-based observations, and the fact that the observations are from a moving platform, pose several challenges related to data integrity. These must be addressed before the data will be broadly usable and acceptable. With funding and support from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration and direction from FHWA’s Road Weather Management Program, the National Center for Atmospheric Research is conducting research to develop a vehicle data translator (VDT) to address these vehicle-based data challenges. The main function of the VDT is to quality check individual vehicle probe data elements, such as temperature and pressure, and then combine them into “derived observations” that are valid along a given length of roadway over a given time. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the VDT Version 3.

• Record URL:
  http://www.trb.org/Publications/Blurbs/167060.aspx
• 
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00978515
• Authors:
  • Drobot, Sheldon
  • Chapman, Michael B
  • Anderson, Amanda
  • Lambi, Brice
  • Pisano, Paul A
  • Guevara, Gabriel
• 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; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 560-572
• Monograph Title: Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather. International Conference on Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather, April 30–May 3, 2012, Coralville, Iowa
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Circular
  • Issue Number: E-C162
  • Publisher: Transportation Research Board
  • ISSN: 0097-8515

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Data quality; Weather conditions; Weather forecasting
• Identifier Terms: Vehicle Data Translator
• Uncontrolled Terms: Vehicle-based technology
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I62: Winter Maintenance;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01371198
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: WM-STW12-105
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: May 25 2012 10:32AM