TY - JOUR
T1 - FHWA's maintenance decision support system project
T2 - Results and recommendations
AU - Mahoney, William P.
AU - Bernstein, Ben
AU - Wolff, Jamie
AU - Linden, Seth
AU - Myers, William L.
AU - Hallowell, Robert G.
AU - Cowie, Jim
AU - Stern, Andrew D.
AU - Koenig, George
AU - Phetteplace, Gary
AU - Schultz, Paul
AU - Pisano, Paul A.
AU - Burkheimer, Dennis
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - The Federal Highway Administration's Office of Transportation Operations Road Weather Management Program began a project in FY1999 to develop a prototype winter road maintenance decision support system (MDSS). The MDSS capabilities are based on feedback received by the FHWA in 2001 from maintenance managers at a number of state departments of transportation (DOTs) as part of an initiative to capture surface transportation weather decision support requirements. The MDSS project goal is to seed the implementation of advanced decision support services provided by the private sector for state DOTs. This has been achieved by developing core software capabilities that serve as a basis for these tailored products. After the 2001 user needs assessment was completed, the MDSS program was extended with the objective of developing and demonstrating a functional prototype MDSS. Field demonstrations of the prototype MDSS were conducted in Iowa between February and April 2003, and during the winter of 2004. The performance of the prototype MDSS was much improved during the second winter. The weather and road condition predictions were more accurate, and the treatment recommendations generated by the system were reasonable given the predicted conditions. Iowa garage supervisors actively considered the treatment guidance, and on occasion they successfully used the recommended treatments without modification. This paper describes the status of the MDSS project, results and lessons learned from the field demonstrations, and future development efforts.
AB - The Federal Highway Administration's Office of Transportation Operations Road Weather Management Program began a project in FY1999 to develop a prototype winter road maintenance decision support system (MDSS). The MDSS capabilities are based on feedback received by the FHWA in 2001 from maintenance managers at a number of state departments of transportation (DOTs) as part of an initiative to capture surface transportation weather decision support requirements. The MDSS project goal is to seed the implementation of advanced decision support services provided by the private sector for state DOTs. This has been achieved by developing core software capabilities that serve as a basis for these tailored products. After the 2001 user needs assessment was completed, the MDSS program was extended with the objective of developing and demonstrating a functional prototype MDSS. Field demonstrations of the prototype MDSS were conducted in Iowa between February and April 2003, and during the winter of 2004. The performance of the prototype MDSS was much improved during the second winter. The weather and road condition predictions were more accurate, and the treatment recommendations generated by the system were reasonable given the predicted conditions. Iowa garage supervisors actively considered the treatment guidance, and on occasion they successfully used the recommended treatments without modification. This paper describes the status of the MDSS project, results and lessons learned from the field demonstrations, and future development efforts.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/33644501075
U2 - 10.1177/0361198105191100113
DO - 10.1177/0361198105191100113
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:33644501075
SN - 0361-1981
SP - 133
EP - 142
JO - Transportation Research Record
JF - Transportation Research Record
IS - 1911
ER -