Weather for the Road: a Mobile Solution

The wide availability of geopositioning services and mobile computing has opened opportunities to create software services to support logistics for commercial entities and individual users. Planning drives around weather events improves road safety and logistics efficiency. A prototype app was developed to provide a service that will help lower the risks of accidents due to weather conditions such as rain, snow, sleet, low visibility, high winds and help plan more efficiently commercial and recreational travel. The app displays forecasts of when and where weather will be encountered along a selected route. The user first selects initial and final drive locations. Google directions service is used to propose different routes. Once a route is selected, gridded weather forecasts are accessed from the National Weather Service (the National Digital Forecast Database, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ndfd/) for locations along the trip and for predicted travel times. Based on this information the app predicts when, where and what kind of weather will be encountered along the drive. The information is provided graphically on the mobile device. The user has then the option to select another route or change departure time to take into account the forecasted weather events.