Paul Pisano

Research Needs for Weather-Responsive Traffic Management

In weather-responsive traffic management, weather events are viewed as nonrecurring incidents that can be predicted and observed and have effects that can be mitigated. Weather impacts on traffic flow are reported, and an emerging concept of operations for a systemwide approach to traffic management in adverse weather is described. This approach is structured to assess weather impacts and implement operational strategies that improve safety, mobility, and productivity. Finally, research needs to advance the state of the practice in weather-responsive traffic management are enumerated.

Improving Road Weather Hazard Products with Vehicle Probe Data: Vehicle Data Translator Quality-Checking Procedures

One of the goals of RITAs IntelliDrive initiative is utilization by the public and private organizations that collect, process, and generate weather products of vehicle sensor data to improve weather and road condition hazard products. Some users may not be able to, or not want to, contend with the complexities associated with vehicle data, such as data quality, representativeness, and format. With funding and support from the U.S. Department of Transportations RITA IntelliDrive initiative and direction from FHWAs 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. This paper first describes the VDT quality check (QCh) concept and then examines QCh pass rates for temperature and pressure data collected from 11 specially equipped vehicles operating in the Detroit test bed in April 2009. Results show that temperature pass rates are higher than pressure pass rates. Additionally, pass rates are somewhat affected by vehicle type, vehicle speed, ambient temperature, and precipitation occurrence for both temperature and pressure.

Quality of Mobile Air Temperature and Atmospheric Pressure Observations from the 2010 Development Test Environment Experiment

The 2010 Development Test Environment Experiment (DTE10) took place from 28 January to 29 March 2010 in the Detroit, Michigan, metropolitan area for the purposes of collecting and evaluating mobile data from vehicles. To examine the quality of these data, over 239 000 air temperature and atmospheric pressure observations were obtained from nine vehicles and were compared with a weather station set up at the testing site.TheobservationsfromthevehicleswerefirstrunthroughtheNCARVehicleDataTranslator (VDT). As part of the VDT, quality-checking (QCh) tests were applied; pass rates from these tests were examined and were stratified by meteorological and nonmeteorological factors. Statistics were then calculated for air temperature and atmospheric pressure in comparison with the weather station, and the effects of different meteorological and nonmeteorological factors on the statistics were examined. Overall, temperature measurements showed consistent agreement with the weather station, and there was little impact from the QCh process or stratifications—a result that demonstrated the feasibility of collecting mobile temperature observations from vehicles. Atmospheric pressure observations were less well matched with surface validation, the degree of which varied with the make and model of vehicle. Therefore, more work must be done to improve the quality of these observations if atmospheric pressure from vehicles is to be useful.

Diagnosing Road Weather Conditions with Vehicle Probe Data: Results from Detroit IntelliDrive Field Study

Over the past 2 years, the U.S. Department of Transportation RITA funded an IntelliDrive vehicle probe data collection test bed in the northwest Detroit, Michigan, area. The purpose of the test bed was to provide the infrastructure for both public and private organizations to collect, process, and generate a robust observation data set for multiple purposes (e.g., crash avoidance, automated toll services, weather diagnostics). During April 2009, a weather-specific field study was performed over an 11-day period. The resulting data set was processed by a vehicle data translator (VDT), which parsed, quality controlled, and combined these data (with ancillary weather data) in the generation of road weather-specific algorithms. This paper briefly describes the VDT concept and then examines the accuracy of the quality-controlled temperature and pressure data (for several different stratifications) collected from 11 specially equipped vehicles operated during the study time period. Results show that the vehicles accurately measure the temperature (compared with a nearby fixed weather station, KDTW), but are not as accurate at measuring the barometric pressure. In addition, stratification by speed, vehicle type, time of day, and occurrence of precipitation do not affect the accuracy of the temperature and barometric pressure measurements.

Assessment of Rural Intelligent Transportation System Wireless Communications Solutions

Rural transportation systems have different features and needs than their urban counterparts. To address safety and efficiency concerns in rural environments, advanced rural transportation systems (ARTS) test and deploy appropriate intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies, many of which require communication support. However, wireless communication systems that currently serve urban areas often are not available or suitable in rural environments. Thus, a need exists to identify communication solutions that are likely to address successfully the needs and features of ARTS applications. Current and emerging wireless communications systems and technologies have been systematically assessed with respect to rural ITS applications. Wireless communication functions associated with rural ITS functions are first identified. Then requirements for applicable communication technologies in the rural environment are defined. Existing and emerging wireless communication systems and technologies are reviewed and evaluated by a systematic process of assessing rural ITS wireless solutions. Finally, recommendations for future research and operational tests are offered. The analysis results are expected to benefit rural ITS planners by identifying suitable wireless solutions for different rural contexts.

U.S. public preferences for weather and road condition information

In 2008, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Board on Enterprise Planning (BEP) established the Committee on Mobile Observations to discuss the application and utilization of mobile weather and road condition data in the context of supporting the weather and transportation communities and how these data could be used to improve safety and mobility across the nations surface transportation system. The goal of the committee is to articulate a clear vision for mobile data that captures the immense opportunities for these data to improve road weather services and transportation safety and mobility. The Committee on Mobile Observations is engaged in numerous activities to accomplish its goal, which includes a nationwide survey of the traveling public to obtain better information on their preferences for and interests in obtaining weather and road condition information, their willingness to share vehicle data, and their willingness to pay for enhanced services. This paper outlines the results of the surv...

Using Vehicles as Mobile Weather Platforms

One of the goals of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration’s IntelliDriveSM initiative is for the public and private organizations that collect, process, and generate weather products to utilize vehicle sensor data to improve weather and road condition products. It is likely that some users will not be able to contend with the complexities associated with vehicle data, such as data quality, representativeness, and format. A solution for addressing this issue is to utilize a Vehicle Data Translator (VDT) to pre-process weather-related vehicle data before it is distributed to data subscribers. This paper will describe the VDT and how vehicle data sets are processed by the prototype VDT to generate derived weather and road condition information.

FHWA's Maintenance Decision Support System Project: Results and Recommendations

The Federal Highway Administrations Office of Transportation Operations Road Weather Management Program began a project in FY 1999 to develop a prototype winter road maintenance decision support system (MDSS). The MDSS capabilities are based on feedback received by the FHWA in 2001 from maintenance managers at a number of state departments of transportation (DOTs) as part of an initiative to capture surface transportation weather decision support requirements. The MDSS project goal is to seed the implementation of advanced decision support services provided by the private sector for state DOTs. This has been achieved by developing core software capabilities that serve as a basis for these tailored products. After the 2001 user needs assessment was completed, the MDSS program was extended with the objective of developing and demonstrating a functional prototype MDSS. Field demonstrations of the prototype MDSS were conducted in Iowa between February and April 2003, and during the winter of 2004. The performance of the prototype MDSS was much improved during the second winter. The weather and road condition predictions were more accurate, and the treatment recommendations generated by the system were reasonable given the predicted conditions. Iowa garage supervisors actively considered the treatment guidance, and on occasion they successfully used the recommended treatments without modification. This paper describes the status of the MDSS project, results and lessons learned from the field demonstrations, and future development efforts.

An Implementation Plan for Cool Season Quantitative Precipitation Forecasting

1 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 2 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Environmental Technology Laboratory, Boulder, CO 3 University of Colorado/CIRES, Boulder, CO 4 Federal Highway Administration, Washington D.C. 5 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento, CA 6 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO 7 National Weather Service, Monterey, CA 8 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Forecast Systems Laboratory, Boulder, CO 9 McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 10 National Weather Service, Eastern Region Headquarters, Bohemia, NY

ADVANCED DECISION SUPPORT FOR WINTER ROAD MAINTENANCE: FHWA DOCUMENTATION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

FHWA created the Road Weather Management Program within the Office of Transportation Operations to develop weather information systems, improve winter maintenance technologies, and improve road weather management practices for all weather threats. The program identified winter road maintenance decision support as a priority. In 1999, the program sponsored the Surface Transportation Weather Decision Support Requirements project to study surface transportation decision making, with a focus on winter road maintenance, and to create an operational concept description (OCD) for an advanced decision-support system to improve the current Road Weather Information System. Described are the findings on winter road maintenance decision making that went into the OCD and the plans for further development of an advanced decision-support application within the Intelligent Transportation System.