Planning a road weather information system with GIS

Abstract

The road weather information system (RWIS), which collects and monitors weather and pavement surface conditions, has been proven effective to support winter road maintenance by improving safety, mobility, and efficiency. Although the geographic information systems are being widely applied for facility siting, traditional practices of sitting RWIS stations still heavily rely on the experiences of maintenance and operation personnel, which is time-consuming and subjective. This study develops a linear model to determine the optimal RWIS locations subject to three selection criteria: weather, traffic condition, and distance to existing RWIS sites, while considering practical constraints to satisfy specific requirements of various agencies (e.g., different weights of weather/traffic factors, various available budgets, etc.).