Extended Abstract (344K)10.13
Supporting Surface Transportation Weather Forecasting at Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc
Cory B. Block, Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc., Grand Forks, ND; and J. J. Mewes and S. G. Gaddy
Weather forecasting for surface transportation is a rapidly growing discipline within the field of meteorology. This is demonstrated by market expansion within evolving 511 traveler information systems and Department of Transportation maintenance activities, including Maintenance Decision Support System(MDSS) development. Such services and systems require very detailed, high-resolution forecasts(both spatially and temporally) for real-time decision making by users, necessitating a paradigm shift in forecasting technologies. Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc. has been at the forefront of this technology development and its implementation within the surface transportation community, providing sophisticated tools to meteorologists to create and monitor a tremendous volume of forecasts. Meridian's current toolset revolves around a grid-based forecasting system and is supported by a suite of forecast initialization, alteration, verification, and dissemination tools. Rule-based reasoning, an archive of historical weather analyses, and mesoscale modeling all play integral roles in the forecasting system. The goal in developing a more advanced forecasting system is to increase forecasting efficiency, providing meteorologists with more time to analyze the weather while demanding less time to create the required forecasts. The Meridian system currently allows a small team of meteorologists to construct and disseminate over 25,000 detailed time- and location-specific forecasts per day in numerous distribution formats(including computer telephony).
Session 10, ADVANCES AND APPLICATIONS IN TRANSPORTATION WEATHER PART II
Wednesday, 12 February 2003, 1:30 PM-5:30 PM
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