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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Title:

State-of-the-Practice in Automatic Vehicle Location for Winter Maintenance Operations

Abstract:

This paper reviews usage of automatic vehicle location (AVL) for winter maintenance applications as identified through a study conducted for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. AVL is a vehicle-based technology that builds on the need for communication of data between a center and maintenance vehicles in the field, especially with respect to the location of a vehicle. It supports a variety of applications, using both real-time and historical data. The use of AVL for winter maintenance has reached a certain level of maturity, with successful deployments by several transportation agencies. Consequently, there is a rich repository of documented experience on lessons learned and best practices for use of AVL in winter maintenance operations. Some of the major themes include the need for thoughtful integration of AVL into an existing vehicle fleet and with the variety of expected users and sensor packages, and the need to consider the communications requirements of the various technologies. Through several years of demonstration and evaluation, many of the problems which plagued earlier AVL deployments, such as sensor protection, communications availability, and GPS accuracy, have been addressed. The level of support from the vendor community has improved as AVL vendors have become flexible, adapting and customizing systems to fit specific customer requirements. Vendors also provide customized maps, statistical analysis, and reports as requested by the customer. AVL users generally plan to sustain or increase their use of the technology, and there are a number of transportation agencies performing AVL pilot projects to further the use of AVL in winter maintenance activities.

Source(s):

86th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, Montana State University, Western Transportation Institute. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2007

Author:

Strong, El Ferradi, Shi

Keywords:


Communications
Route choice
Mobile sensing
Institutional issues
Costs

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