June 2020

Road Weather Information Systems or RWIS provides invaluable data about road weather and the real-time condition of the roadway during winter events. When RWIS began to be deployed back in the 1990’s the big question was, and still is 30 years later, how many sensor stations should be installed and where should they go. The Aurora consortium has been looking at this question and recently completed a project on Optimum RWIS Density, Phase 2.

Dr Tae Kwon from the University of Alberta describes this work and the results he obtained. For more information on this project visit the Aurora website at https://aurora-program.org/research/completed/optimal-rwis-sensor-density-and-location-phase-2/

or you can contact Dr. Tae Kwon by email at tjkwon@ualberta.ca

Maintenance Decision Support Systems or MDSS are an excellent tool to help maintenance managers evaluate all the important information about a storm including the output from advanced forecasting tools and make better decisions regarding optimal treatment strategies. On this episode Dave Huft of the South Dakota DOT will give us some insight into these systems and how DOTs utilize them in their winter maintenance operations.
For more information about the MDSS Pooled Fund Study you can follow this link to their website: https://mdss.iteris.com/mdss/pfs/ or start up a dialogue with Dave by emailing him at Dave Huft