01371229

Component

http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/167060.aspx

http://www.trb.org/Publications/Blurbs/167060.aspx

Global Science & Technology, Inc. (GST) primarily developed the United States’ first mobile (vehicle-based) environmental observation network. Funded by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS), GST has established a foundational infrastructure for a national mobile environmental observation network that offers enormous potential for providing real-time road weather and surface conditions for the entire country. The funded Mobile Platform Environmental Data (MoPED) system is a proprietary environmental sensing system with partner commercial fleets on which the sensing systems are installed. MoPED is an information processing system that acquires and disseminates mobile environmental and vehicle data to government and commercial interests. Through the development of MoPED, GST has established new mobile observation and metadata standards and created quality control methodologies. The MoPED project is presented as a case study to share GST’s experience and knowledge related to the state-of-the-art technologies and methods for vehicle acquisition of environmental observations as weather information to improve operations, safety, and performance of surface transportation systems. MoPED’s purpose to acquire mobile environmental and vehicle data for inclusion in the national mesonet is per the policy recommendation of the National Research Council to improve meteorological observation and detection of phenomena at the mesoscale level. The first prototype MoPED system was successfully demonstrated to NOAA with the U. S. Department of Transportation, FHWA, and Research and Innovative Technology Administration in attendance. GST then advanced the prototype into an initial capability with national coverage provided by hundreds of commercial vehicles, which provide millions of data observations. This detailed national coverage of environmental data along important transportation corridors provides enormous insight to road weather and surface conditions. The benefit to the user is increased situational awareness, which potentially factors into decisions taken regarding travel risk. Moreover, the NWS is able to refine forecasts, watches, and warnings based on the detailed data provided by mobile platforms in areas that otherwise would be unsampled. NWS further benefits by the possible inclusion of mobile platform observations from MoPED into the initialization of predictive models. Because the participating commercial fleets travel major transportation routes, the fleets provide excellent urban coverage near population centers, as well as more remote areas between the origin and destination points of travel. Using mobile platforms to acquire environmental data supplements traditional fixed weather stations from airports and road weather stations (i.e., Clarus) with observations that have finer temporal and spatial resolutions. Vehicles taking data observations every 10 s at highway speeds provide data at the microscale level of spatial detail to the MoPED system, which exceeds expectations for mesoscale meteorological data resolution.

01371195

WM-STW12-124

English

pp 363-372

2012-4

Transportation Research Circular

International Conference on Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather

Web

Figures; Maps; Photos; References; Tables

Commercial vehicles; Data collection; Real time information; Weather conditions; Winter maintenance

Mobile Platform Environmental Data (MoPED) system

Data and Information Technology; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I62: Winter Maintenance

TRIS, TRB

May 18 2012 9:56AM