An Overview of the FHWA Winter Road Weather Project

    FSL "Science" Seminar
    November 13, 2000

    Paul Schultz

    The NWS and surface transportation
     

       Aviation community:  NWS/CWSUs at FAA ARTCC's
       Marine community:  NWS/WFOs in coastal locations issue marine forecasts
       Surface transportation community:  no specific services -- why?


    Highway operations are managed by state DoTs
     

       Traffic operations centers
       Tailored weather services come from Value-Adding Meteorological Services (VAMS)
          - Huge variety of highway met services out there


    The roles of FHWA
     

       Standards
       Research
       Demonstration projects
       Service to state DoTs
          - organize consortia of state DoTs to pool resources


    How FSL got involved
     

       MacDonald is/was on AMS Sfc Transportation Committee
       FHWA solicited proposals ca. 1996 for integrated higher-tech weather info in winter road maintenance decision support systems
       Castle Rock Corp enlisted FSL and NCAR to participate in FORETELL project.
       FHWA initiated a new project to be conducted by 6 "National Labs"


    The 6 National Labs
     

      FSL, NCAR/RAP, CRREL, MIT/LL, NSSL, ETL
       Met at FSL last February
          - heard presentations from many state DoTs
       Met in Cambridge MA in May
          - long discussions about what we should do
       Met at  NCAR in October
          - decided what we'll do ($$$)


    The Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) project
     

       NCAR/RAP will:
          - collect operational and prototype weather data
          - objectively forecast key weather elements using DICAST
          (DICAST figures:  Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5)
          - run road ice/snow prediction models
          - run DSS software
          - make a nice GUI for everything
       
    The roles of each National Lab
     
       MIT/LL will provide automated video camera imagery analysis (vis, precip)
       CRREL will provide road condition prediction models, GIS hooks, and DSS software
       ETL is involved in advisory capacity
       NSSL will provide precip type algorithms for use with Eta, AVN
       FSL will provide real-time NWS datasets and local modeling services
       NCAR will put it all together


    FSL's roles
     

      Prototype LDAD services via FD
          - LDM
          - path toward migration to NWS
       Maximum-resolution hot-started model runs
          - hot start running 4 times per day at FSL
          - clouds and precip processes present in initialization -- no "spin-up"
       Mesoscale model runs and ensemble
       Domain:  to be negotiated
       Model(s):  to be determined
       Configurations:  not yet established