Collaboration Across the Road Weather Enterprise: The Pathfinder Project

General Definition (consistent with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Capability Maturity Model):

Standardized strategy applications implemented in priority contexts and managed for performance; Technical and business processes developed, documented, and integrated into the Department of Transportation (DOT); Partnerships aligned.

Full, sustainable core DOT program priority, established on the basis of continuous improvement with top level management status and formal partnerships.

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Business Process

Capabilities for formal scoping, planning, programming, and budgeting of the program.

• Funding for road weather management is part of regional planning process.
• Dedicated funds with flexibility are available as part of a multi-year program.
• Resource sharing processes and procedures in place to maximize response capabilities in accordance to the scale of the event between jurisdictions of an agency. Inter- agency collaboration is improving but challenges continue to exist.
• Policies allow for a full range of appropriate advisory, control and treatment strategies. Primarily driven by and reliant on operator and field personnel feedback.

• Funding is tied to a multi-year strategic roadmap for road weather.
• Strategic plan includes consideration on future needs incorporating medium-term and long-term changes to climate, technology and reinvestment in systems.
• Plan that includes recovery and resiliency of systems to extreme weather.
• Common process and procedures allow greater integration into other aspects of the agency like construction, transit operations.
• Established and understood guidelines, overrides and thresholds for automated activation of advisory, control and treatment actions.

General Definition (consistent with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Capability Maturity Model):

Standardized strategy applications implemented in priority contexts and managed for performance; Technical and business processes developed, documented, and integrated into DOT; Partnerships aligned.

Full, sustainable core DOT program priority, established on the basis of continuous improvement with top level management status and formal partnerships.

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Systems and Technology

Capabilities to use systems engineering, systems architecture standards, level of interoperability, and standardization.

• Systems and technologies integrated fully into the regional ITS infrastructure.
• All deployments follow a robust systems engineering process driven by clear user needs.
• Generally reliable systems with remote health monitoring and limited quality control algorithms.
• Design specifications, siting criteria allow for consistency in deployment of systems.
• High-level of integration with internal and external weather sources.
• Some use of decision-support tools but improvements in interpretation and analysis are needed.
• Geographically complete coverage through fully build out RWIS network.
• Road segment information gathered through field personnel input but latency issues continue to persist.

In addition to items in Level 3:

• Agency invests in test beds and other research to continuously develop new capabilities.
• Systems engineering process is used for all projects with high internal capability to review deliverables like requirements and design documents.
• Device reliability and data quality issues are automatically tracked, reported and responded to by field personnel.
• Multiple sources of weather, road weather data including road segment data.
• Agency has strong capability to assess, integrate weather and road weather data into decision-making through appropriate decision- support tools.

General Definition (consistent with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Capability Maturity Model):

Standardized strategy applications implemented in priority contexts and managed for performance; Technical and business processes developed, documented, and integrated into DOT; Partnerships aligned.

Full, sustainable core DOT program priority, established on the basis of continuous improvement with top level management status and formal partnerships.

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Performance Measurement

Capabilities for performance measures definition, data acquisition, and utilization.

• Ability to generate congestion and reliability measures in real-time for adverse weather conditions.
• Winter severity index used but regional comparisons are still difficult to make.
• Performance measures for weather reported on a seasonal basis including overall traffic impacts.

In addition to items in Level 3:

• Ability to document the benefit over null or the "do-nothing."
• Ability to define measures and normalize them over seasons, events and regions through a documented process.
• Ability to report performance through publically available dashboards by event.

General Definition (consistent with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Capability Maturity Model):

Standardized strategy applications implemented in priority contexts and managed for performance; Technical and business processes developed, documented, and integrated into DOT; Partnerships aligned.

Full, sustainable core DOT program priority, established on the basis of continuous improvement with top level management status and formal partnerships.

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Culture

Capabilities relating to technical understanding, leadership, outreach, and program legal authority.

• Clear objectives for safety, level of service, cost-efficiency are documented and understood at all levels of the agency.
• High level of comfort in using forecast and meteorological information to make both strategic and tactical decisions from both traffic and maintenance standpoint.
• Action reviews post major event allow for improvement in tactics and overall strategy.
• Consideration of full lifecycle of event with greater emphasis on recovery, mitigation, planning than in Level 2.

In addition to items in Level 3:

• Agency sets other objectives like environmental stewardship, customer satisfaction as integral part of the road weather response.
• Continuous improvement process through after action reviews, best practice surveys, technology insertion.
• Able to consider managing demand on facilities/network prior to the event and influence mode, route and time choices.

General Definition (consistent with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Capability Maturity Model):

Standardized strategy applications implemented in priority contexts and managed for performance; Technical and business processes developed, documented, and integrated into DOT; Partnerships aligned.

Full, sustainable core DOT program priority, established on the basis of continuous improvement with top level management status and formal partnerships.

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Organization and Workforce

Capabilities relating to programmatic status, organizational structure, staff development, and recruitment and retention.

• Staffing needs are formalized with specific roles across the entire department and include a broader range of skills including weather expertise, field equipment maintenance.
• Access to documented procedures, training manuals for in-take of staff relating to all aspects of road weather operations.
• Support to participate in Peer to Peer exchanges between regional, national agencies allow for exchange of best practices and ideas.

In addition to items in Level 3:

• Cross-training of agency staff on road weather management activities.
• Meteorological expertise.
• In-house analysis, modeling capabilities for alternative analysis of road weather management strategies.
• An in-house certification program for road weather personnel.

General Definition (consistent with American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Capability Maturity Model):

Standardized strategy applications implemented in priority contexts and managed for performance; Technical and business processes developed, documented, and integrated into DOT; Partnerships aligned.

Full, sustainable core DOT program priority, established on the basis of continuous improvement with top level management status and formal partnerships.

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Agencies at this level for road weather management are likely to be or have:

Collaboration

Capabilities relating to relationships with public safety agencies, local governments, metropolitan planning organizations, the private sector and the traveling public.

• All involved stakeholders have strong situational awareness pre- and during event and are able to coordinate responses.
• High degree of collaboration with the weather community with pre-event discussions and phone calls informing the overall response.
• Proactive messaging via the media. Lead in getting the message out to the traveling public.
• Starting to engage the public directly via social media.

In addition to items in Level 3:

• Joint operational decision making between internal and external stakeholders such as decisions on diversions, road closures, coordinated travel advisories.
• Device sharing and control
• In-house or procured expertise to act as liaison between weather enterprise and DOTs.
• Social media, citizen reports are widely used to create a customer-oriented two-way engagement strategy with the public and media.