MTC Asset Newsletter Summer 2005

Recently Completed Research

An Investigation of User Costs and Benefits of Winter Road Closures

Tom Maze (Iowa State University)

Severe winter weather makes travel unsafe and dramatically increases crash rates. When conditions become unsafe due to winter weather, road closures should allow users to avoid crash costs and eliminate costs associated with rescuing stranded motorists. Therefore, the benefits of road closures are the avoided safety costs. The costs of road closures are the delays that are imposed on motorists and motor carriers who would have made the trip had the road not been closed. This project investigated the costs and benefits of road closures and found that evaluating the benefits and costs is not as simple as it appears.

A Web-Based Implementation of Winter Maintenance Decision Support System (WMDSS) Using GIS and Remote Sensing

Ramanathan Sugumaran (University of Northern Iowa)

A major goal of this project was to implement a web-based winter maintenance decision support system (WMDSS) for planning snow removal operations that enhances the capacity of stakeholders (city/county planners, resource managers, transportation personnel, citizens, and policy makers) to evaluate different procedures to manage snow removal assets optimally. This goal was accomplished by integrating geo-spatial analytical techniques (GIS and remote sensing), existing snow removal asset management systems (SRAMS), and web-based spatial decision support systems.

The developed system not only manages and allocates resources but also provides expert advice to assist complex decision making such as routing, optimal resource allocation, and live weather information monitoring. This system was developed in collaboration with Black Hawk County, Iowa; the City of Columbia, Missouri; the Iowa DOT; and the cities of Cedar Falls and Waterloo, Iowa. Demonstration versions of this product were also given to these agencies in order to improve the usability and applicability of the system.