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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Evaluation of Weather Forecasts Provided by Commercial Vendors for Winter Highway Maintenance Purposes

Abstract:

The focus of winter road maintenance operations in recent years has been more on prevention instead of reacting to problems after they have occurred, which requires more accurate weather forecasts. State DOTs spend a considerable portion of their winter maintenance budgets in getting accurate weather forecasts and are interested in getting the best value out of their money. During winter 2002/2003 the Kansas DOT obtained weather forecasts from three commercial weather data providers for four selected locations within the state. This paper presents the analysis for determining the vendor that provided the most accurate and reliable forecast. In doing so, the researchers used the prediction of frost events as the performance measure. Several different measures that were capable of quantifying the selected attributes, reliability, accuracy, and skill were used to evaluate different forecasts for each location and for combined data as well.

Source(s):

84th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, Kansas State University. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2005

Author:

Dissanayake, He, Landman, Knapp

Keywords:


Winter maintenance
Pavement condition
Ice/Frost

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