Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
Office of Operations 21st century operations using 21st century technologies

Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Best Practices > Publications > Publication Titles

Title:

A Case Study of the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) in Maine

Abstract:

This report presents the results of a case study evaluation of a Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) project under a program funded by the U.S. DOT Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Joint Program Office. The FHWA Road Weather Management Program has sponsored development of a prototype Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS). The federal MDSS prototype software modules are available to private vendors who have utilized them to develop decision support applications tailored to the needs of state DOTs. An MDSS was offered to the Scarborough crew of the Maine DOT, by Meteorlogix/DTN. This research was conducted to evaluate the concept of an MDSS by assessing the uses and benefits of MDSS deployment on a segment of interstate in the vicinity of Portland, Maine based upon a comparison of historical winter maintenance practices and those practices facilitated through the use of the MDSS tools. The objectives of this research were to assess institutional issues and potential benefits of using an MDSS, and to identify from Maine DOT's experience lessons of value to other DOTs across the country. The evaluation team worked with Maine DOT to identify these benefits and lessons from their use of the MDSS in support of winter maintenance operations during the winter of 2006-2007. This assessment examined the institutional challenges faced by MaineDOT's Scarborough crew and the strategies they employed as they used a variety of tools, including the MDSS, to fight each of the winter storm events they faced. Using a detailed event reconstruction approach, data were collected for 12 winter storm events that required a maintenance response in order to characterize the uses of the MDSS as a maintenance tool, versus not using an MDSS (i.e., how maintenance operations would have been conducted prior to having access to an MDSS). Lessons learned are derived from the reconstruction of these storm events that may be of use to other state DOTs considering implementing the MDSS technology.

Source(s):

Battelle, Prepared for the U.S.DOT, Publication No. FHWA-JPO-08-001

https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/3972/dot_3972_DS1.pdf

Date: 2007

Author:

Cluett, Jenq

Keywords:


Institutional issues
Benefits
Winter maintenance

PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.
Office of Operations