Print
|
Close Window
Highway maintenance operators use FORETELL weather information system to prepare roads for impending storms
In the Upper Mississippi Valley Region, the FORETELL
TM
weather information network was deployed to offer detailed, timely, and relevant road weather information to highway and trucking professionals, transit operators, and other rural roadway users via the Internet.
The FORETELL website provided a simple interface that detailed a Weather display, and a Road display. The Weather display detailed temperature, precipitation, dewpoint-humidity, wind, forecasted radar, clouds, atmospheric pressure, and accumulation totals. The Road display detailed overall road condition, road pavement temperature, road dewpoint, road freeze point, and road snow depth.
FORETELL collected the weather data from NOAA, numerous pavement and atmospheric sensors installed at Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) sites, agricultural sites, and airports throughout the region. The data were input into advanced heat balance models to forecast road surface temperatures and predict when and where precipitation would melt, freeze, or just blow off the road.
To evaluate FORETELL, surveys were collected before and after deployment to determine the impact of the system on the weather related activities of highway maintenance operators. In November 1999, baseline data were collected, and then over the next two winters follow-up surveys were conducted.
Approximately one-third of highway maintenance operators who used the system changed weather-related decisions based on the FORETELL information provided (e.g. wind speed/direction, precipitation, atmospheric temperature, pavement temperature, pavement condition, and dewpoint). Greater than 50% of users said they wanted to continue using the system in the future, and about 20% said they would be willing to pay for the service.
See the related ITS Benefits Database entry
for more information
.
Past
"Benefit of the Month"
summaries are also available.