01371210

Component

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

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

The U.S. Department of Transportation established the Clarus Initiative in 2004 to reduce the impact of adverse weather conditions on surface transportation users. Clarus has been a research and development initiative to demonstrate and evaluate the value of “Anytime, Anywhere Road Weather Information” to the breadth of transportation users and operators. The goal of the initiative was to create a robust data assimilation, quality checking, and data dissemination system that could provide near real-time atmospheric and pavement observations from the collective states’ investments in road weather information systems and related weather-observing technologies. Beginning in 2008, the FHWA initiated multistate regional demonstrations intended to show how Clarus facilitates better transportation system management and enables the private sector to create improved road weather information business solutions. In response to Use Case 5 of the Clarus Regional Demonstration, termed Enhanced Road Weather Content for Traveler Advisories, Meridian Environmental Technology teamed with the state agencies that comprise the North–West Passage Transportation Pooled Fund study to design and develop an enhanced, multistate traveler information system. This traveler information system, composed of a web portal and computer telephone systems, was intended to leverage the multistate nature of Clarus’ data to provide a seamless source for traveler information across the I-90, I-94, and intervening corridors that make up the North–West Passage. The demonstration was also intended to break new ground in the provision of traveler information via enhancement of road weather content, enabled through multisensor analyses enhanced by Clarus’ environmental sensor station data, and through predictive road and travel condition information leveraging maintenance decision support system technologies. This paper will provide an overview of the resulting traveler information system as well as the lessons learned through its implementation. Specific topics of discussion include addressing the conflicts between the underlying systems for tracking and reporting road conditions between the participating states, issues encountered in interpreting and conveying potentially conflicting data from competing information resources, considerations in the provision of predictive road condition information, and an assessment of user receptiveness to these concepts as determined via independent evaluation of the Clarus Use Case 5 Regional Demonstration.

01371195

WM-STW12-119A

English

p 373

2012-4

Transportation Research Circular

International Conference on Winter Maintenance and Surface Transportation Weather

Web

Decision support systems; Demonstration projects; Implementation; Lessons learned; Road weather information systems; Traveler information and communication systems; Weather conditions; Winter maintenance

Clarus

Road conditions

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

TRIS, TRB

May 18 2012 10:25AM