Weather Applications and Products Enabled Through Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII)

11. Next Steps

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MOVING FORWARD

The overarching goal of the VII initiative from a weather perspective is for the weather enterprise (defined as all the public and private organizations that collect, process, and generate weather products) to utilize vehicle data to improve weather and road condition products and to provide those products to transportation system decision makers including travelers.

The utilization of data from mobile platforms is not new in the weather community, as ship-based observations have been used for more than a century. Data from aircraft have been used successfully for nearly a decade, and the number of parameters available from aircraft is expanding from primarily wind and temperature to humidity, turbulence, and icing. The utilization of data from vehicles poses significant technical challenges, particularly with respect to data quality; nevertheless, VII represents a technology that holds considerable promise of significantly increasing the density of weather observations in the atmospheric boundary layer.

Case studies in which vehicle data were compared with conventional weather data were presented herein. These cases were promising; there was good correlation between vehicle data elements (wiper state, temperature, and pressure), radar data, and surrounding surface observations. Vehicle data acquisition and distribution enabled by VII will result in a number of road weather product improvements. Potentially, these improvements will include the ability to provide accurate, timely diagnoses and predictions of atmospheric and road conditions. This information could be distributed to surface transportation stakeholders, including vehicle operators, to improve roadway safety and mobility.

One of the most important aspects of VII in terms of weather application development is the fact that a significant amount of research will be required to understand the most effective methods of using vehicle-based data, as the characteristics of the data will vary greatly between vehicle manufacturers, vehicle models of the same manufacturer, and sensors types and models. It is unlikely that any single vehicle-based data element will be able to stand alone as truth, as there will be too many uncertainties about their quality. Vehicle data will need to be processed in a statistical manner to address data outliers and to raise the overall confidence in data quality. The weather community has substantial experience combining multiple disparate datasets to derive products. Vehicle data will have to be treated in a similar manner. Even with those caveats and concerns, the authors believe that it will be feasible to utilize VII-enabled vehicle probe data in the generation of weather and road condition products and that these new datasets will contribute to an improvement in roadway safety, mobility and efficiency.

In order to ensure the success of the VII initiative from a weather perspective, the authors recommend that several steps be taken. They include the following:

1. Experts from the meteorological community should take an active role in helping to guide selected aspects of the VII program such as the proposed strategies for RSE deployment and probe message processes, and the design and implementation of VII-related proof of concept and field operational tests. It is clear that selected components of the VII program will have a substantial affect on how and what road weather products can be enhanced and developed using VII-enabled data. In addition, the validity of road weather products will be determined by the approaches used in the VII test and deployment process. Given that the weather community will likely be a key user of VII data, including weather experts in discussions regarding selected elements of the VII program will ensure that final system design will take into account road weather application needs.

 

2. A Weather Data Translator (WDT) should be developed and field tested to facilitate the use of weather-related vehicle probe data. Once VII is fully deployed and implemented, thousands of vehicles will be routinely gathering and transmitting information to the VII network for distribution to data subscribers. Many of these subscribers may not have the knowledge or capacity to use vehicle data in its "raw" form. A WDT will provide the necessary data processing (filtering, quality checking, and statistical processing) that will enable the use of VII data by a larger number of subscribers. Without such a function, the feasibility of utilizing vehicle probe data will be lower and there will be substantially more risk in its use. The WDT will require a significant amount of scientific and engineering research and development. The complexity of the WDT should not be underestimated.

 

3. Significant investments should be made in research and development that will support effective use of current and anticipated weather-related vehicle data elements. It is apparent that the use of weather-related data elements for the improvement of road weather products will contain numerous scientific and technical challenges. Therefore, it is imperative that research be conducted to identify, understand, and if possible, resolve these issues. Research should include, but not be limited to, investigations into the impact of probe message processes and RSE deployment, VII adoption rates, data quality, quality checking for mobile platforms, data processing, human factors, data assimilation in numerical models, and data fusion techniques.

 

4. Application and product developers should refrain from attempting to use weather-related VII data elements as standalone truth. Raw vehicle data elements will contain a considerable amount of uncertainty with regard to data quality and representativeness, but it is evident that, at some level, VII-enabled data will be able to provide information about the state of the atmosphere and road conditions. This information should be derived from VII and ancillary datasets by utilizing advanced data processing techniques.

 

5. It is essential that prior to product development, developers conduct extensive research on the vehicle data elements of interest in an effort to ensure the proper use of those data. If possible, this should include collaborating with multiple OEMs that design and implement the sensors or devices from which the data originate. Although work is being done to construct a set of standards for VII data (e.g. data units, data precision, etc.), vehicle data are produced from onboard sensors and devices that originate from numerous OEMs and their subcontractors. Thus, it will be vital for weather and road condition product developers to gain a thorough understanding of vehicle data. For example, traction control event data supplied by the VII network may inform a data user that an event occurred; however, the user will not have any information about how traction control was implemented on that particular vehicle (e.g. operational limits). Thus, it will be important for weather application developers to acquire a broad understanding of the characteristics associated with the vehicle data they are attempting to use.

 

6. The initial process of improving road weather information through VII should begin with targeting basic applications and products that can be improved or constructed with rudimentary vehicle data elements (e.g. temperature, pressure, and wiper state). This study has documented a number of potential data elements that could be used for road weather information purposes. However, it is vital that developers do not attempt to solve complex problems while VII is in its infancy. There is a considerable amount to learn regarding data acquisition, transmission, quality, etc. To attempt to use information such as millimeter-wave radar data before gaining a more thorough understanding of more basic elements like temperature could be detrimental to the success of VII, as it relates to potential weather and road condition related enhancements.

The potential use of VII-enabled data in weather and road condition-related applications and products for surface transportation has been examined herein. The availability of VII-enabled data would most certainly lead to improvements in road weather products. Advancements in the diagnosis and prediction of adverse weather and road conditions could be realized using data currently available from many vehicles. Moreover, technological improvements in the automotive industry will likely result in additional environmental and road-related data elements becoming available in the future, which will provide additional capability for improving and generating weather-related products for the surface transportation industry.