Weather Applications and Products Enabled Through Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII)
3. Methods
REPORT DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
During the course of this study, The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) held two VII Weather Application Workshops/Expert Panel meetings. These took place during the first half of 2006. The workshops were designed to bring together experts from the automotive industry, VII Consortium, VII architecture and probe message processes development team, and the weather community. The overarching goal of these two meetings was to discuss and gather input related to the proposed VII Architecture, probe message processes, potential data elements, road weather products, and the technical and scientific challenges associated with the use of VII data. Information captured during these discussions has been used to shape the contents of this report. Notes from these meetings are contained in Appendices A and B.
In an effort to track VII advancements, the authors of this report attended several other conferences and symposia including national and international conferences such as the Transportation Research Board (TRB), American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA) annual meetings, 2005 ITS World Congress, the 2005 VII Public Meeting in San Francisco, and the 2005 Travelers Information Workshop held in Arlington, VA. These meetings provided the added opportunity to explore VII from the perspective of the private sector. Interactions with private sector vendors helped to shed light on the kinds of weather-related applications they felt would be beneficial for their customer base. Finally, these meetings were used as a means to update the VII community and others on the progress being made regarding the development of this report.
In addition to interactions with VII experts, an extensive literature review was conducted to further gain an understanding of the currently envisioned VII architecture and probe message processes. This review also aided in the identification of potential weather-related vehicle data elements and their characteristics. Each one of these factors will have a significant influence on the role VII could play in road safety and mobility improvements, especially as it relates to road weather hazards.
Throughout this investigation, NCAR developed several positive relationships with outside organizations. One of the most notable is with DaimlerChrysler. Like many automotive manufacturers, DaimlerChrysler is investigating the process by which data from vehicles can be gathered and transmitted to infrastructure in support of product development. In doing so, DaimlerChrysler has built up an archive of vehicle data acquired primarily in the Detroit Metropolitan area. A subset of these data was provided to NCAR. Weather-related data elements contained in the dataset include wiper state, temperature, and barometric pressure. As a result, NCAR has been able to carry out subjective analyses of these data and further explore the potential contribution of VII-enabled data to weather application and product development (see section 6).
