The FHWA Road Weather Management Program for Decision Support

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Road Weather Management Program, in conjunction with the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) program, has identified decision support to winter road-maintenance managers as a priority. In 1999-2000, the Surface Transportation Weather Decision Support Requirements (STWDSR) project was conducted to perform needs analysis and create an operational concept description for an integrated decision support application within the ITS. The STWDSR project conducted operations research on treatment of winter weather threats to highways and convened a group of six national laboratories to begin development of an advanced decision support system. Requirements for improved weather and road-condition information sources were also identified. This paper describes the results of the STWDSR project to date and the plans for the decision support development program.