What is it about?
Forecasting of road surface and traffic conditions is an important aspect of traffic safety and winter road maintenance, especially in the harsh northern climate. In this study, we describe road weather model RoadSurf that has been developed to enable the estimation of the rapidly varying conditions e.g. with the onset of snowfall or during rapid temperature variations.
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Why is it important?
A prior knowledge of road weather is important from public road safety standpoint. Proper consideration of upcoming weather events also helps the road maintenance authorities to attend the roads in an effective and economical way. In addition to individual RWS station and road segments, RoadSurf can also be applied at a national scale.
Perspectives
Roadurf has proven to be a very versatile tool in road weather forecasting development at the Finnish Meterorological Institute. As input the model can employ NWP model forecasts as well as weather radar, synoptic or road weather station measurements. The model has been used in various intelligent traffic applications, and spin-off applications for pedestrian sidewalk condition forecasting and road maintenance advice have been developed.
Dr Markku T.T. Kangas
Finnish Meteorological Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: RoadSurf: a modelling system for predicting road weather and road surface conditions, Meteorological Applications, January 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/met.1486.
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