'Leveraging Weather and Transportation Data in Support of Winter Maintenance Operations Performance'

The Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) has made significant investments in the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS), acquisition of dedicated weather operational expertise, and the development and refinement of its winter severity index, known as the Nebraska Winter Severity Index (NEWINS), to better support their winter maintenance operations. These resources have improved NDOT’s internal operations, coordination with its partners, and its statewide service. However, specific quantification of performance is necessary to maintain and improve NDOT’s service to its customers. NDOT, and the transportation community as a whole, presently face unprecedented challenges with staffing shortages, changed travel patterns and preferences in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, and increasingly variable weather conditions. As such, the ability to quantify winter maintenance performance in ensuring safety and reliability across the transportation network is paramount.

This study seeks to provide strategic guidance to NDOT in the development of its own suite of performance metrics by conducting an inventory of available weather, mobility, traffic camera, and maintenance data. These data will be collected for select case studies from the 2020–21, 2022–23, and 2023–24 winter seasons on select Nebraska road segments. A collection of weather data from an impact-based predictive winter severity index developed for NDOT, referred to as NEWINS-Predictive (NEWINS-P), observed snowfall, and surface observations will be analyzed to provide meteorological context at the state and segment level. The road conditions along selected segments will be assessed using NDOT traffic camera images and speed data retrieved from the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System. Finally, maintenance activities along the selected road segments provided by the MDSS will be used to determine the maintenance performance.

Collectively, these data used to analyze the case studies are expected to provide insight into developing different types of maintenance performance metrics, which could allow NDOT to better understand its resource allocations during winter storms. Additionally, performance metrics can be an internal tool to enhance planning/scheduling activities and/or an external-facing tool to showcase how NDOT is serving the public. Performance tracking may also assist with decisions on longer term NDOT investments such as physical equipment, maintenance assets, and service products.