RoadSurf 1.1: open-source road weather model library

Abstract

Icy and snowy road conditions cause problems in many countries where temperature often drops below 0 °C. Preventive actions are necessary to keep roads ice-free and to optimize maintenance operations. Accurate road surface temperature and road condition forecasts are essential help for road maintenance crews to plan their actions. The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has produced road weather forecasts for many years with the in-house road weather model RoadSurf to aid local road authorities. Recently, FMI published an open-source road weather model library that consists of RoadSurf functions. The open publication provides an opportunity for many institutes and companies to use the library in road weather forecasting. The evaluation of the library shows that it is well suited for forecasting road surface temperature.