Road Weather Management Program
photos of lightning, trucks plowing snow, an empty road before a storm, and an evacuation
Office of Operations 21st century operations using 21st century technologies

Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

Best Practices > Publications > Publication Titles

Title:

An Autonomous Approach to Road Temperature Prediction

Abstract:

To provide ice warnings for road maintenance, a forecasting model has been developed that computes the state of the road several hours in advance. The model, which is called HS4Cast, runs autonomously and does not need human input. The forecast model features a fuzzy logic engine that determines the best forecast by evaluating certain patterns in the measure paramaters. Using this forecast engine, predictions of up to 24 hours in advance are possible with reasonable accuracy. If available, additional forecasts from a weather center may be imported into the model so that the effects of precipitation are taken inot account, this further reduces forecast errors. Statistics summarizing the model's performance are presented using data from several measurement sites along an Austrian motorway, where HS4Cast has been in use since about 1990.

Source(s):

Meteorological Applications of the Royal Meteorological Society Vol. 5, Forschungsinstitut fur Technische Physik (Austria). For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 1998

Author:

Hertl, Schaffar

Keywords:


Pavement temperature
Air temperature
Precipitation
Ice/Frost

PDF files can be viewed with the Acrobat® Reader®.
Office of Operations