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:

Winter Road Condition Model

Abstract:

The large-scale winter model project resulted in a model for assessing the most important effects and the monetary value of changes to winter maintenance strategies and operations. The road condition model characterized the state of a winter in terms of a road condition description hour by hour. The road condition model provided input data for the other models assessing different effects such as crash risk, travel time, fuel consumption, and environmental effects. In the first stage, a model that described how road conditions were affected by weather, what maintenance measures were taken, and the volume of traffic on two-lane rural roads with a width of 7 to 9 m and speed limit of 90 km/h was developed. For several periods data from environmental observation sites contained information hour by hour regarding weather, traffic flow, initial road condition, maintenance measures taken, and specified types of road condition development mainly connected with snow ploughing and anti-icing measures. Additional information, such as development of ruts down to the pavement in hard-packed snow or thick ice caused by vehicles with studded tires and conditions for a wet or moist road to dry out, was collected by field studies during the 2002?2003 winter season.

Source(s):

6th International Symposium on Snow Removal and Ice Control Technology, Transportation Research Circular, No. E-C063

http://trb.org/publications/circulars/ec063.pdf

Date: 2004

Author:

Moller

Keywords:


Pavement condition
Forecast/Prediction

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