The process of gathering information about road conditions during a winter storm typically involves plow operators, enforcement or other traffic operations staff reporting on conditions that they observe while on the road. These staff perform several critical functions during road weather events and reporting road conditions for traveler information is often less critical than other functions. This frequently leads to inconsistent, inaccurate and untimely reports. ENTERPRISE sponsored this effort to research what transportation agencies are doing to leverage technology and automate or assist with winter road condition reporting. Phase 1 of the effort focused on gathering information about how agencies were approaching automated and assisted classification of road conditions. Phase 2 explored specific attributes of data that can be used to automate road condition reporting with the intent of increasing agencies’ understanding and evaluation of this data. This was achieved by establishing a list of available data sources, providing an overview of the types of data available from each source, describing common characteristics for various types of data, and gathering information about agency experiences with data to automate the reporting of winter road conditions.
Enterprise