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21st Century Operations Using 21st Century Technologies
Table of Contents

Integrated Modeling for Road Condition Prediction Phase 3 Project Report

Chapter 1. Introduction

Background

Transportation systems management and operations (TSMO) is at a critical point in its development due to increased data availability and analytics. New approaches in road weather management are bringing together meteorology, traffic management, law enforcement, maintenance, and traveler information to support agency decision-making and influence travel behavior. Through these operational efforts and private-sector innovations, travelers today have higher expectations for their travel experience. Travelers now participate in generating and validating information as well as consuming it. This trend will accelerate with deployment of connected vehicle (CV) systems. Within this context, the role of prediction and forecasting will become more important to the travel and activity choices made by travelers, as well as to agency decisions in transportation operations. Freight carriers and logistics providers will also benefit in planning routes, times, and delivery schedules.

Development and adoption of traffic prediction approaches by operating agencies have been limited, however, even with a growing body of research. While this is partly attributable to limited data, available predictive tools have been narrowly focused and have not taken full advantage of developments in related disciplines and domains. As a result, the use of predictive methods in support of operational decisions continues to be limited.

Recent efforts to incorporate forecasted weather conditions into traffic predictions have shown considerable promise. Factoring in reported conditions from environmental sensor stations, vehicle fleets, and citizen-reported conditions could improve estimation of the current system state from which predictions are developed. The utility of traffic predictions could be further enhanced by augmenting the forecast weather conditions with known and likely capacity constraints, such as work zones and incidents. Current and planned road treatment approaches, snowplow routing, parking restrictions, and maintenance decisions could be included as well.

Based on these opportunities, the Federal Highway Administration Road Weather Management Program (RWMP) has undertaken the investigation, development, and demonstration deployment of an Integrated Modeling for Road Condition Prediction (IMRCP) system. This effort has included a survey of available and imminent weather, hydrological, traffic, and related transportation management models; development of a concept of operations and fundamental system requirements; development of a system architecture and system design; implementation of a foundational system; and deployment of the system with an operating transportation agency to evaluate its effectiveness. Research, development, and operations stakeholders have been involved in every part of the IMRCP effort.

Phase 1 of the IMRCP initiative developed the foundational concept of operations and requirements. The model envisioned therein is a practical tool that State departments of transportation (DOT) can use to support traveler advisories and maintenance and operational decisions at both strategic and tactical levels. The IMRCP phase 2 work specified, implemented, tested, and evaluated the IMRCP concept in a demonstration. The concept was vetted with a broad stakeholder group and then developed in a straightforward systems engineering process that continued to incorporate stakeholder feedback at key intervals. Working with local and State agencies, the demonstration system was deployed in part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Performance of IMRCP models and interfaces was evaluated over a 4-month period of operations in late 2017 with the Kansas City Scout (KC Scout) traffic management center (TMC).

IMRCP phase 3 builds on the prior work to investigate operations applications. The objectives of phase 3 are to redeploy the phase 2 model over the same area in Kansas City, increase the geographical coverage to all Kansas City metropolitan area highways in the KC Scout areas of operation, add an additional traffic model, run the system for two winter seasons, evaluate the system results, and update the system documentation. The expanded deployment operated for 18 months with enhancements throughout the period. IMRCP system operations and the operations response with KC Scout were independently evaluated.

Purpose

The purpose of the IMRCP is to integrate weather, traffic, and other operations data sources with analytical methods to effectively predict road and travel conditions. Identification of system functions and interfaces is driven by stakeholders in TSMO who also provide feedback on the usefulness of model results. The model could ultimately become a practical tool for transportation agencies to support traveler advisories, maintenance plans, and operational decisions at both strategic and tactical levels.

This project report describes the phase 3 development, demonstration, evaluation, and assessment of the IMRCP. It provides a summary description of the system design, the study area deployment and engagement, operations experience, and evaluation.

Scope

The IMRCP provides a framework for the integration of road condition monitoring and forecast data to support tactical and strategic decisions by travelers, transportation operators, and maintenance providers. The system:

  • Collects and integrates environmental observations and transportation operations data.
  • Collects forecast environmental and operations data when available.
  • Initiates road weather and traffic forecasts based on the collected data.
  • Generates travel and operational advisories and warnings from the collected real-time and forecast data.
  • Provides the road condition data, forecasts, advisories, and warnings to other applications and systems.

Road condition and operations data and forecasts integrated into the prediction, as available, include:

  • Atmospheric weather.
  • Road (surface) weather.
  • Small stream, river, and coastal water levels.
  • Road network capacity.
  • Road network demand.
  • Traffic conditions and forecasts.
  • Traffic control states.
  • Work zones.
  • Maintenance activities and plans.
  • Emergency preparedness and operations.

Document Overview

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the background, purpose, and scope of the project and this document.

Chapter 2 describes the overall IMRCP project, including the methodology and approach, project tasks and deliverables, and stakeholder engagement.

Chapter 3 describes the process of implementing and deploying IMRCP, including the vision and objectives, user needs, application scenarios, system description, study area description and modeling, traffic model calibration, system deployment and operations, and open-source work product.

Chapter 4 describes the evaluation of the IMRCP project.

Chapter 5 describes the end results of phase 3 of the IMRCP. This section includes case studies and applications; lessons learned and limitations; and deployment considerations, conclusions, and recommendations for further study.