2017 Road Weather Management Performance Measures Update

Chapter 1. Introduction

Since 2006, the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Road Weather Management Program (RWMP) has conducted a periodic assessment of program effectiveness in improving the performance of the transportation system during adverse weather conditions. Assessments of program performance were conducted and documented in 2009, 2012, and 2015.^(1,2,3) These updates reviewed program initiatives and major accomplishments; assessed the continued suitability, strengths, and weaknesses of existing measures for evaluating program performance; and incorporated new measures, as appropriate, that reflected current and future program initiatives. The 2017 Road Weather Management Performance Measures Update is a continuation of this periodic review of the RWMP's performance and an update to the 2015 report.

OBJECTIVES OF REPORT

The performance measures update and associated reports allow the RWMP to evaluate its progress and effectiveness in accomplishing its goals and to assess the Nation's overall capability with respect to road weather management. The report also serves as a resource and outreach product to further advance the importance and widespread implementation of road weather technologies. This assessment helps to communicate the overall success of the RWMP and identify areas that need more focus, support, or outreach. The 2017 report presents the latest results of the RWMP's performance measures, highlights significant changes or improvements from the last update, and lists recommendations on future focus areas for the RWMP.

ROAD WEATHER MANAGEMENT PROGRAM'S GOALS, OBJECTIVES, AND KEY PRODUCTS

The RWMP strives to better understand the ways weather impacts roads and to promote successful strategies and tools to mitigate those impacts. In broad terms, the program achieves its goals through stakeholder coordination; road weather research and development; technology transfer, training, and education; and performance management and evaluation. The RWMP is guided by eight program objectives used to determine technical direction and activity. The objectives are:

1. Build and sustain relationships with multi-disciplinary partners to expand road weather management (RWM) deployments.
2. Ensure road weather management investments improve highway performance.
3. Advance the transportation, weather, and research communities' use of, and reliance on, fixed and mobile road weather observations.
4. Advance the state of the art for mobile sensing and integrating vehicle data into road weather applications.
5. Advance the state of the practice by promoting tailored management strategies for different regions.
6. Improve integration of weather-related decision support technologies into traffic operations and maintenance procedures.
7. Advance the state of the practice by raising road weather capabilities and awareness across the transportation and weather communities.
8. Increase the engagement of the operations community with climate change and sustainability communities.

To support these objectives, the RWMP has produced several research products and services. Some of the most recent products include:

• Road Weather Management Capability Maturity Framework (RWM CMF). The RWM CMF includes a model and electronic tool that is publicly available to transportation agencies to help them assess their current strengths and weaknesses and develop a targeted action plan for road weather management within their individual agencies and regions.
• Every Day Counts (EDC) Initiative – Weather Savvy Roads. The Weather Savvy Roads innovation consists of two road weather management solutions: (1) Pathfinder and (2) Integrated Mobile Observations (IMO). Implementing these innovations will help agencies better manage their road network and inform travelers before and during adverse road weather conditions.
• Weather Responsive Traffic Management (WRTM) Implementation Projects. The program worked with three State departments of transportation (DOT) to evaluate the use of mobile road weather data to improve road weather management.
  1. Wyoming DOT Road Condition Reporting Application.
  2. South Dakota DOT Regional Traveler Information System.
  3. Michigan DOT Weather-Responsive Traveler Information System.
• Benefit-Cost Analysis for Road Weather Management. The RWMP continued to expand the application of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) for RWM through the development of technical briefs (three were published in last 2 years). The briefs, which complement the RWM BCA Compendium of Case Studies, serve as resources for agencies to understand and apply BCA on their agency RWM practices. The RWM BCA Compendium was also recently updated to include additional case studies, increasing the total number of case studies/examples in the document to 27.
• Road Weather Connected Vehicle (CV) Applications Program. Several activities are underway for this program including: (1) development and implementation of guidelines for deploying connected vehicle-enabled WRTM; (2) support for the Wyoming CV deployment pilot which includes a strong weather component; and (3) development and demonstration of an Integrated Model for Road Condition Prediction (IMRCP).
• Weather Data Environment. The Weather Data Environment (WDE) is a research project that collects and shares transportation-related weather data with a particular focus on weather data related to CV applications. The WDE collects data in real time from both fixed environmental sensor stations and mobile sources. Since the past update, continued development of the WDE has primarily been to support the stability of the system and maintain State DOT Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) station information changes.

APPROACH

The research team's approach for the 2017 update included a review of 2015 RWMP performance measures and results, as well as the program's current objectives, activities, and products. The team then developed a plan for conducting the 2017 update and provided recommendations for presenting the results. In general, the reporting period for the performance update is from 2015 to mid-year 2017. The four categories of sources that provided data elements for the performance measures are listed:

• RWMP Records. The FHWA RWMP's research, training, and stakeholder engagement activities are documented in its records. These data represent the location and extent of the RWMP activities.
• State DOT Survey. A targeted survey of State DOTs provided data on the current practices and capabilities for RWM around the country. The survey was completed by 40 State DOTs (an 82 percent response rate), which is the same number of States that responded to the 2015 survey, facilitating quantitative comparisons. Figure 1 (shown on the following page) illustrates the distribution of the survey respondents.
• Agency Sources, Literature Reviews, and Internet Searches. Road weather data from other Federal, State, and local agency sources, along with research institutions (e.g., databases, literature reviews, case studies, publications) provide additional inputs into the performance measure update—especially information pertaining to system outcomes and specific case studies or evaluations of road weather management strategies.
• Additional Data Sources. Other data resources are used to supplement the primary sources listed above to meet the data requirements for the performance measurement update. In many cases, these data elements are used to support the findings for the performance measures.

Figure 1. Map. State department of transportation survey respondents.

For this update, the team explored an alternative approach to presenting the performance measure results and mapped the 27 performance measures into at least one of the following categories:

1. Road weather management impacts.
2. Application of road weather management tools and technologies.
3. Road weather management capacity building.
4. Partnerships and stakeholder collaboration.

Mapping the performance measures to the appropriate category (or categories) allows the RWMP to tell a simple and concise story regarding the performance measure results instead of merely presenting each metric's latest results. These categories allow a big picture assessment of the RWMP's progress and success. Presentation and analysis of individual performance measures are presented in Appendix B.

Table 1. Performance measure mapping.

Performance Measure	RWM Impacts Assessment	Application of RWM Tools and Technologies	RWM Capacity Building	Partnerships & Stakeholder Collaboration
1. Number of agencies participating in road weather research and development projects.			X	X
2. Number of agencies participating in and benefiting from RWM stakeholder meetings/ workshops.			X	X
3. Number of agencies that collect and report road weather-related performance measures to the public.	X
4.  Number of agencies that have a process for evaluating the ROI or net benefit of their RWM investments.	X		X
5.  Reductions in agency costs of weather-related maintenance and operations activities.	X
6.  Reduction in number and types of fatalities and crashes attributed to adverse weather nationally.	X
7. Reductions in extent of capacity losses and delays due to fog, snow, and ice events including freight.	X
8. Increase in travel time reliability or decrease in variability due to RWM strategies during adverse weather scenarios.	X
9. Reduction in number of tons of salt or chemical usage in U.S. normalized by winter severity index.	X
10. Number of State DOTs participating in Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) program.		X		X
11. Number of State DOTs that subscribe to RW products and services.		X
12. Number of State DOTs collecting mobile observations of road weather data from vehicle fleets.		X
13. Number of State DOTs reporting the use of ESS in operations and maintenance activities.		X
14. Number of/percentage of responding agencies using mobile data-based applications in RWM.		X
15. Number of States disseminating advisory weather and RW information to travelers.			X
16. Number of agencies using control and treatment strategies during weather events.			X
17. Number of agencies participated in or conducted RWM capability maturity assessment exercises.			X
18. Number of agencies that coordinate with their local forecast offices for RWM and operations.			X
19. Number of agencies adopting maintenance decision support systems (MDSS) technology and methods.		X
20. Number of agencies using other weather-related decision-support tools.		X
21. Number of agencies reporting use of analysis tools to factor weather imp acts and strategies.		X
22. Number of agencies and attendees who have taken sponsored RWMP training courses and workshops.			X
23. Number of agencies and participants in RWM webinars led by the RWMP.			X	X
24. Number of meetings, site visits or venues where RWM presentations/ briefings were made.			X	X
25. Number of hits/visits to RWMP websites.*				X
26. Number of public agencies meeting Infrastructure Voluntary Evaluation Sustainability Tool (INVEST) and/or sustainability criteria related to RWM.		X	X
27. Number of agencies conducting vulnerability/risk assessment or developing/ implementing resiliency plans, for their RWM infrastructure and processes to respond to climate change and extreme weather.		X	X

ORGANIZATION OF REPORT

The remainder of the report is organized such that each chapter is able to stand alone. As mentioned, the research team mapped each performance measure to one or more of the four categories. For example, if the reader would like to learn more about the extent the RWMP has been partnering or collaborating with various stakeholders, Chapter 5 will provide that story using a combination of performance measure results.

• Chapter 2, Road Weather Management Impacts, describes the recent findings related to mitigating the mobility, safety, productivity/economic and environmental impacts of adverse weather conditions.
• Chapter 3, Application of Road Weather Management Tools and Technologies, examines the specific road weather tools and technologies and the extent to which State agencies have applied them.
• Chapter 4, Road Weather Management Capacity Building, shows how the RWMP is providing stakeholders with flexible and accessible learning and growth opportunities through training, technical assistance, and resources.
• Chapter 5, Partnerships and Stakeholder Collaboration, describes how the RWMP is collaborating and partnering with public and private stakeholders through various activities.
• Chapter 6, Recommendations and Conclusions, presents overall conclusions from the 2017 update and recommendations for the RWMP and its next performance measure update effort.

This report also includes two appendices, which provide the following information:

• Appendix A lists the State DOT survey questions and response summary.
• Appendix B presents the findings for each performance measure.