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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Thermal Mapping: Reliability and Repeatability

Abstract:

In winter road maintenance, accurate information as to the spatial variation in minimum road-surface temperature is valuable for road authorities and organizations to decide where to target salting or abrasive treatment. The process to record and quantify these patterns of temperature variation is called thermal mapping. The technique relies on the fact that the pattern of road-surface temperature is reproduced from one night to the next similar night. This study establishes a valid statistical means of quantifying the similarity between temperature patterns captured during different thermal mapping surveys and is used to show that the thermal mapping process developed by the authors is reliable and that the pattern of temperature variation across a road network is reproduced under similar weather conditions.

Source(s):

Meteorological Applications of the Royal Meteorological Society Vol. 3, Vaisala TMI (United Kingdom). For a copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 1996

Author:

Shao, Lister, Hart, Pearson

Keywords:


Thermal mapping

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