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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Verification of the Road Weather Forecast System Run During the 2003 Demonstration at the Iowa Department of Transportation

Abstract:

The Road Weather Forecast System (RWFS) was developed by NCAR for the FHWA's winter road Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) project. The RWFS, which is based on a data fusion technology that NCAR previously developed for general weather forecast applications, was reconfigured to generate specific forecasts for winter road maintenance routes. The RWFS attempts to objectively maximize forecast accuracy (minimize error) by blending output from standard and research numerical models with surface observations and statistical regressions. Tuning of the system is done through comparison of model output with surface observations from National Weather Service meteorological aeronautical report (METAR) sites and Iowa DOT RWIS sites to provide optimized forecasts of both standard weather and extended highway parameters (e.g., road temperature). Overall verification results from the first Iowa DOT RWFS demonstration are presented in this paper. The demonstration examined forecasts of air temperature, precipitation type, and road temperature; as well as MDSS recommended and actual Iowa DOT treatments.

Source(s):

6th International Symposium on Snow Removal and Ice Control Technology, Transportation Research Circular, No. E-C063

http://trb.org/publications/circulars/ec063.pdf

Date: 2004

Author:

Bernstein, Wolff, Linden, Myers

Keywords:


Winter maintenance
Air temperature
Precipitation
Pavement condition
Road Weather Information System (RWIS)
Decision support

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