Road Weather Management Program
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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Evaluation of Utah Department of Transportation's Weather Operations/RWIS Program: Phase I

Abstract:

The UDOT Weather Operations/ RWIS program is unique among state departments of transportation nationally, as it assists the DOT operations, maintenance, and construction functions by providing detailed, often customized, area-specific weather forecasts. Staff meteorologists are stationed in the Traffic Operations Center (TOC), providing easily accessible weather information and quality control of weather forecasts. A national survey confirmed the benefits of such customized forecasts, including more accurate forecasts; timely forecasts and access to a forecaster; advanced warning of storm conditions; better response time and improved planning and scheduling of staff; and better use of chemical products. By examining the labor and materials cost for winter maintenance in the 04-05 season for 77 UDOT sheds, an artificial neural network model was trained and tested to establish the shed winter maintenance cost as a function of UDOT weather service usage, evaluation of UDOT weather service, level-of-maintenance, seasonal vehicle-miles traveled, anti-icing level, and winter severity index. The model estimated the value and additional saving potential of the UDOT weather service to be 11-25 percent and 4-10 percent of the UDOT labor and materials cost for winter maintenance, respectively. It was also estimated that the risk of using the worst weather service providers to be 58-131 percent of the UDOT labor and materials cost for winter maintenance. The research findings are expected to provide planners cost-benefit information to consider integrating weather service into their TOC or Transportation Management Center (TMC), and to provide maintenance engineers useful information about the value of customized weather service.

Source(s):

Western Transportation Institute, Montana State University-Bozeman; Prepared for the Utah DOT

http://www.nw-weathernet.com/studies/WTI_Operational_Weather_Forecast_Study.pdf

Date: 2007

Author:

Shi, O'Keefe, Wang, Strong

Keywords:


Weather information
Benefits
Costs
Winter maintenance

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