Utilizing Weather Data to Create Network and Agency Resiliency

Date and Time: Tuesday, May 9, 2023: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Keck 100

 

Lead Presenter:  Laura Fay, Research Scientist
Affiliation:  Western Transportation Institute - Montana State University
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Lead Presenter Biography

Laura Fay, Senior Research Scientist, serves as the Program Manager for the Cold Climate Operations and Systems research group at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University. She holds a M.S. in Environmental Science and Health from the University of Nevada, Reno and a B.S. in Earth Sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has over a decade of transportation related research experience and a demonstrated publication record in the areas of winter maintenance operations and environmental issues related to maintenance operations and materials, and low volume roads. Laura is an active member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) under the National Academies serving as the committee chair for the Low Volume Roads Committee and as a committee member on the Winter Maintenance Committee. 

Co-Authors

Karalyn Clouser, Research Associate, Western Transportation Institute - Montana State University; Natalie Villwock-Witte, PhD, P.E., Research Engineer, Western Transportation Institute - Montana State University

Presentation Description 

Transportation agencies use storm severity indexes (SSI) or winter severity indexes (WSI) to gauge the impact of weather on roadway maintenance and resources. SSI/WSI are increasingly enabling transportation agencies to prepare for and react to winter weather which cause major impacts to mobility. This presentation will provide a high-level overview of recent work which examined several SSI/WSIs currently in use by surface transportation agencies and provide some general tips to get started with implementing a SWI at your agency.

SSIs and WSIs are used by surface transportation agencies to grade the degree to which weather impacted maintenance resources and serve as valuable tools to help contextualize winter maintenance performance by explaining effort and costs. By translating variables such as storm duration, total snowfall, and pavement temperature into a single severity value, these indexes are designed to allow an agency to make an apples-to-apples comparison 1) between storms and 2) across multiple winter seasons. Severity indexes can be a valuable tool for measuring performance, managing maintenance operations, and budgeting for future costs and resources.

SSIs/WSIs are tools that can support resiliency at agencies by encouraging data-driven decision making. These tools are actively being used to aid in planning, assessment of storm and winter costs and effort - real-time and retrospectively, and to make programmatic changes in purchasing and allocation of resources.

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