The Main Challenges of Winter Road Service to be Solved Within the Framework of Intelligent Transportation System

Abstract

Winter road maintenance as a set of routine network operations has a huge influence on mobility in snowy regions, providing certain safety level for road users and even possibility of several sections in critical weather conditions. There are still a lot of challenges to optimise the performance of winter road works, as well as to set more appropriate levels of service, defining and controlling the balanced scope of key performance indicators (KPI). Intelligent transportation system (ITS), as a distinctively innovative, but at the same time already quite mature sector, might bring a complex cost effective solutions to the field. Some of them could be distinctively opportunistic, thus to be introduced and operated in low-cost manner, based on reuse of the existing data (integration) and extensive feedback from road users. Traffic information, road weather information system (RWIS), management decision support systems (MDSS) for winter road operations and sectoral subprocesses are in the scope of the proceeding. Although this topic has a global meaning, the discussion is oriented on the actual needs of Latvian road industry with scope of national road network.