2017 Road Weather Management Performance Measures Update

Chapter 4. Road Weather Management Capacity Building

OVERVIEW

Capacity building refers to providing stakeholders with flexible, accessible learning, and growth through training, technical assistance, and educational resources. When applied to road weather management, it includes activities and products that improve the performance of weather-related actions. This includes participation in various stakeholder meetings, road weather research and development (R&D) projects, training programs, conferences, and webinars. The goal of capacity building is to improve individual as well as organizational capacities for addressing and overcoming road weather problems.

PERFORMANCE FINDINGS

Participation in Road Weather Management Meetings and Community of Practice Participation in road weather management (RWM) meetings has shown a consistent and strong response, as seen in Figure 19. Stakeholder meetings began with a focus on maintenance decision support systems (MDSS) and Clarus, but starting in 2010, they shifted to focus more broadly on RWM. Since 2011, stakeholders have met to discuss weather responsive traffic management (WRTM) on a biennial basis.

The number of State departments of transportation (DOT) attending the Road Weather Management Program (RWMP) meetings has increased from only 7 in 2014 to about half of the States in 2015 (27) and 2016 (24). The WRTM meeting in 2015 attracted 23 State DOTs. Since 2013, attendance to the WRTM meetings has been limited due to budget restrictions for sponsored travel. The Every Day Counts (EDC) Summits held in 2016 were well-attended, with 48 States participating along with the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These summits were sponsored by the FHWA Center for Accelerating Innovation to promote the EDC- 4 Weather Savvy Roads Initiative.

Participation in Capability Maturity Improvement Workshops

Another important aspect of capacity building is advancing the institutional capabilities for RWM by State DOTs. The Federal Highway Administration's Capability Maturity Framework workshops and tool help agencies to develop action plans for raising existing RWM capabilities based on an evaluation of the agency's current practices, tools, and infrastructure. The Capability Maturity Framework assessment is a first step towards greater mainstreaming of RWM programs at State DOTs. Ten States have already conducted the capability maturity assessment workshops. Since the framework was developed in 2014, there was no participation to report in the previous period. It is encouraging that 10 States, spanning a diverse range of climates, have already participated in the in-person workshops in just a couple of years.

Participation in Road Weather Management Sponsored Training and Webinars

Since 2015, there has been a decline in the number of State agencies participating in courses offered by the Consortium for ITS Training and Education (CITE), as seen in Figure 20. This is expected since the number of RWM practitioners in transportation agencies remains fairly constant. Unless significant hiring takes place in those agencies (both new positions and staff replacements), the pool of potential trainees for these courses will dwindle.

Figure 20 includes the participants of both independent-study and instructor-led versions of each of the three courses. While the instructor-led courses take place on fixed dates once or twice a year, the independent-study courses can be taken at the participants' own pace at any time throughout the year; for this reason, each data set is presented more broadly across a time span of 2 years. It is difficult to determine the reason for this drop in attendance without enough long-term data trends, but some evaluations of the courses tended to revolve around a common criticism that the online nature of the courses makes the content and delivery less effective.

It is also important to consider that the RWM-related courses offered from year to year may easily change depending on what topics are of pressing concern at a particular time. While some courses may see declines in attendance, others may see increases by corresponding amounts. In other words, it is difficult to gauge the nationwide interest in RWM programs as a whole by looking at only a few specific courses. Furthermore, a decline in "popularity" could simply be due to external factors such as busy work seasons or a re-prioritization of resources, rather than a general lack of interest in a certain topic. For example, while CITE courses saw a decline in attendance for RWMP-related online courses, the number of agencies participating in RWMP Road Weather Regional Roundtables (webinars) increased, as show in Table 2.

Table 2. Number of State transportation agencies participating in Road Weather Management Program webinars.

Date	Number of Agencies
December 2015	17
March 2016	30
October 2016	35

Furthermore, a total of 384 participants – representing all 50 State DOTs – took part in the 7 EDC-4 Weather-Savvy Roads (WSR) summit meeting sessions held in Baltimore, Minneapolis, Albany, Austin, Orlando, Portland, and Sacramento during October and November 2016. The attendance at EDC summit meetings was not a metric assessed in the previous iteration of this report due to WSR being a recent initiative by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) RWMP in 2016.⁽¹⁵⁾

Road Weather Management Engagement with Stakeholders in Public Conferences

RWM-related workshops and conferences vary and evolve over time and do not necessarily keep the same name, sponsor, location, or topic. For this reason it is not always easy to reach conclusions about RWM capacity building through direct comparisons of specific conferences; furthermore, collection of attendance information is not always consistent and reliable from year to year. One can, however, try to get a general sense of nationwide interest and involvement in various RWM topics by examining a broad array of reported attendance data across multiple years. RWMP representatives (staff and contractors) also provide presentations, briefings, and demonstrations at various meetings, site visits, or venues – extending the program's reach beyond its own activities. This measure indicates the broader presence that RWMP holds in the transportation and weather community. In the 2015-2017 timeframe, RWMP was represented by program staff or support contractors as shown in Table 3. Attendance data was not collected in the previous iteration of this report, examining the 2013-2014 period.

Table 3. Meetings with Road Weather Program representation.

Year	Road Weather Program Activities 2015-2017	Number of Participants	Number of State Agencies
2015	American Meteorological Society (AMS) Summer Community Meeting, Raleigh, NC, August, 2015	250	N/A
2015	Transportation Research Board (TRB) Climate Resilience, Washington, DC, September 2015	250	15
2015	National Weather Service (NWS) Central Region Meteorologist/Hydrologist-in-Charge Meeting, Kansas City, MO, May, 2015	150	0
2015	AMS 2015 Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, January, 2015	60	0
2015	NWS National Winter Weather Meeting, College Park, MD, August, 2015	50	0
2015	NWS Fall Strategy Meeting, Silver Spring, MD, October, 2015	30	0
2015	Aurora Pooled Fund Board Meeting, Reno NV, March 2015	25	18
2015	American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December, 2015	20	0
2015	Colorado Department of Transportation (DOT) Pathfinder Meeting, Denver, CO, December, 2015	20	1
2015 Subtotal		855	N/A
2016	American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Subcommittee on Maintenance, Las Vegas, NV, July 2016	150	50
2016	AMS Washington Forum, Washington, DC, April 2016	125	N/A
2016	TRB Int'l Conf. on Surface Transp. Wx and Winter Maintenance, and SIRWEC, Fort Collins, CO, April 2016	120	8
2016	AMS Forum on Observing the Environment from the Ground Up, Washington, DC, March, 2016	100	0
2016	AMS 2016 Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, January, 2016	70	0
2016	Automatic Vehicle Location /GPS Peer Exchange, Sacramento, CA, October, 2016	50	10
2016	NWS / Federal Highway Administration Directors Briefing, Silver Spring, MD, August, 2016	50	0
2016	Every Day Counts (EDC)-4 Summit, Minneapolis, MN, October, 2016	35	9
2016	Aurora Spring Board Meeting, Phoenix, AZ April 2016	25	18
2016	EDC-4 Summit Meeting, Albany NY, November 2016	24	7
2016	Capitol Hill briefing on winter weather forecasting/impacts (AMS Policy Program), Washington, DC, March, 2016	20	1
2016 Subtotal		769	N/A
2017	AMS 2017 Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, January, 2017	80	N/A
2017	Aurora Pooled Fund Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, April 2017	27	19
2017	Chicago AMS Stakeholder Meeting, Chicago, IL January 2017	17	5
2017 Subtotal		124	N/A