Wintersense: Demonstrating the potential of the IoT in winter road maintenance

On a cold night in winter with a frost forecast, UK highway authorities potentially spread up to 35,000 tonnes of rock salt over 3,500 salting routes in order to keep the nation's key roads open and safe. The spreading of de-icing agents in such quantities is not only a financial burden in terms of the costs of applying the salt and the damage it causes to concrete structures, but it can also be very damaging to the environment, adding salt to otherwise freshwater water courses. Despite the environmental issues, the perceived savings in reduced road accidents and road user delays are considered to be more important.

Winter maintenance engineers base their nightly decision making by consulting a Road Weather Information System (RWIS) which combines weather forecast data with road temperature and condition data. Marginal nights (where the road surface temperatures are forecast to be close to freezing) are the most problematic. In this situation, highway engineers face a difficult decision of whether or not to salt the network. If salt is spread, but no frost occurs, then unnecessary financial expenditure has occurred. However, if salt is not spread and a frost occurs, the roads become unsecured and a local authority could be subject to legal action. Even before the current economic climate, local authorities in the UK were under considerable pressure to demonstrate that they were achieving 'best value' from their winter maintenance budgets. Unfortunately, repeated budget cuts (to some extent justified by a run of mild winters before 2010) can lead to complacency and a lack of preparedness in winter maintenance regimes. This has had significant, highly noticeable, implications over the last few severe winters. As such, there is a significant challenge in achieving best value under the new financial regime. It is here where winter road maintenance needs to embrace the new opportunities afforded by the Internet of Things to make decision making smarter.

The latest generation of RWIS is based on route based forecasts which take into account how the local geography interacts with the regional climate to produce a detailed model of road surface temperatures for every 50m section of road. By knowing which sections of road are likely to fall below the 0C threshold on a night-by-night basis, highway engineers can selectively treat just the affected routes and thus make significant savings in salt usage. However, this is presently not happening. In an environment of increasing litigation, practitioners are nervous about making decisions based on model output as opposed to ground truth. This now means that the verification of route based road weather forecasts is urgently needed at an unprecedented scale. This proposal seeks to solve this problem by producing and deploying a new generation of low cost, internet enabled, sensors embedded within an Internet of Things ecosystem. However, this approach will not only provide a monitoring and verification solution, but also has the potential to form the basis of a new 'nowcasting' (i.e. forecast for the next 3 hours) solution for winter road maintenance. Hence, this project will develop and deploy a number of infrared road surface temperature sensors across an existing wireless network in Birmingham These sensors will be linked to a dedicated data hub which will manage the live feeds and update road weather forecasts in real-time to facilitate pro-active decision making by highway engineers.

The work will be of relevance to any organisation or individual interested in the decision making process involved in winter road maintenance. The general public will also benefit from safer roads in winter. Quality of life will be improved by reducing the financial burden of winter road maintenance whilst maintaining health and safety for taxpayers. However, the primary direct beneficiaries to this research are the local highway authorities and other associated organisations responsible for winter road maintenance across the UK. As such, engagement activities will initially target this audience. This will be achieved by raising awareness of the project and associated technologies at the the premier annual event for winter maintenance practitioners based in the UK. This event has now been running for over 20 years and provides an annual opportunity for practitioners to hear about the latest research, developments and technology in the sector. It is extremely well attended, with the 2013 event attracting approximately 500 delegates from across the country. Hence, it provides a unique opportunity to target nearly all the key people working in the sector. The event is split into two components, a traditional conference and an exhibition where companies in the trade display their latest products and innovations. It is proposed that this event (Cold Comfort 2015) will provide a unique opportunity to showcase the work on this project. It is proposed that a stand is procured in the exhibition hall so that the sensors developed on this project can be demonstrated live to the delegates. The aim is to try and recruit a small number of interested parties to demo a sensor on their own road network. Whilst few highway authorities will be in the position to deploy a network of sensors such as that detailed in this proposal, all will have the capability to host a wireless sensor at some point on their network for trial purposes. Access will also be given to all interested parties to the data hub, so that they can personally assess the utility of 'low-cost' sensors for monitoring road surface temperatures. This approach will also be backed up with an article in the Surveyor magazine that month which is freely distributed to delegates as part of the delegate pack. Finally, if invited, a presentation will also be given as part of the conference component. However, this may actually be most applicable post project (e.g. Cold Comfort 2016) to present the findings of the project and therefore the overall applicability of the IoT in winter maintenance. Further UK engagement activities can also be facilitated by speaking to special interest groups (e.g. TSB Internet of Things) and the relevant Knowledge Transfer Networks (e.g. Sensors & Instrumentation KTN, Transport KTN and indeed the Transport Catapult). This approach is considered to be a strong, and original, means of attracting UK interest to the project, promoting engagement from interested and conducting the research 'into the wild'. With respect to an international audience, a similar, but scaled back dissemination strategy is proposed. The Standing International Road Weather Commission holds a bi-annual conference which typically has around 300 international academic, trade and practitioner delegates (typically from Northern and Eastern Europe, North America, Japan and China). Presentations will be made at this event in 2016 where the results of this project, and indeed the sensors can once again be demonstrated. Again, this is an excellent opportunity to highlight the utility of the Internet of Things approach to a diverse audience and should instantly facilitate international impact. It is envisaged that given the current rate of technological change, the ideas presented in this proposal may well become standard in the sector within 5 years.