TITLE:
Leveraging Telematics for Winter Operations Performance Measures and Tactical Adjustment
AUTHORS:
Jairaj Desai, Justin Mahlberg, Woosung Kim, Rahul Sakhare, Howell Li, Jeremy McGuffey, Darcy M. Bullock
KEYWORDS:
Connected Vehicle Data, Telematics, Winter Operations, Snowplows, Weather
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.11 No.4,
September
10,
2021
ABSTRACT: The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) maintains 29,000 lane
miles of roadway and operates a fleet of nearly 1100 snowplows and spends
upwards of $60 million annually on winter maintenance operations. Since winter
weather varies considerably, allocation of snow removal and deicing resources
are highly decentralized to facilitate agile response. Historically, real-time
two-way radio communication with drivers has been the primary monitoring
system, but with 6 districts, 29 subdistricts, and over one hundred units it
does not scale well for systematic data collection. Emerging technology such as
real-time truck telematics, hi-resolution NOAA data, dash camera imagery, and
crowdsourced traffic speeds can now be fused into dashboards. These real-time
dashboards can be used for systematic monitoring and allocation of resources
during critical weather events. This paper reports on dashboards used during
the 2020-2021 winter season derived from that data. Nearly 13 million location
records and 11 million dash camera images were collected from telematics
onboard 1105 trucks. Peak impact of nearly 1570 congested miles and 610 trucks
deployed was observed for a winter storm on February 15th, 2021
chosen for further analysis. In addition to tactical adjustments of resources
during storms, this system-wide collection of resources allows agencies to
monitor multiple seasons and make long-term strategic asset allocation decisions. Also, from a public
information perspective, these resources were found to be very useful to
agencies that interface with the media (and social media) during large storms
to provide real-time visual updates on conditions throughout the state from
pre-treatment, through cleanup.