01124175

Component

In northern latitudes, road salt remains a key element of winter maintenance operations. At the same time, there is increased pressure to reduce salt usage without compromising level of service or safety. Road salt usage models provide a way of benchmarking and understanding spatial-temporal variations in maintenance operations, and therefore have value in working toward improved salt management practices. The current study outlines a new approach for modeling road salt usage that addresses many of the limitations of past models. This approach is developed and illustrated using automatic vehicle locator data for three seasons and one provincial highway patrol near Ottawa, Canada. Using categorical, hourly salt application rates for specific highway segments as the dependent variable, and various sources and types of forecast and observed weather conditions as the independent variables, five different treatment modes are modeled using classification trees. Results are promising in terms of both the accuracy of predictions and the ability of this inductive approach to identify key explanatory variables and related threshold values that affect the probability of different treatment options. The winter index that results from this approach can incorporate both the most likely treatment mode as well as its probability, and can be scaled such that the same data inputs and outputs can be used to characterize winter weather at various temporal scales, from individual storms to entire winter seasons.

01120148

09-1642

English

15p

2009

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (2) ; References (10) ; Tables (6)

Automatic vehicle location; Deicing chemicals; Level of service; Maintenance practices; Spatial analysis; Winter maintenance

Temporal analysis

Ottawa (Canada)

Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I62: Winter Maintenance

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-1642

TRIS, TRB

Jan 30 2009 5:53PM