For many years, winter maintenance decisions have been made primarily using atmospheric conditions, such as air temperature and amount of precipitation, and data relating to the pavement surface, such as surface temperature and surface condition. These have proved to be very useful parameters to use and provide vital information to help decide when and where an action may be needed and to understand the current state of any road network. Recent techlogical advancements in both sensing and forecasting have made a new and potentially extremely useful parameter easily available, the surface grip. Grip measures the friction between the vehicle tire and the road surface and is impacted by how much water is on the pavement surface and what state it is in. Simply put, the more sw and ice there is, the lower the grip and the higher the probability that vehicles will start to lose traction and skid. However, it is t as easy as saying sw means the grip level is x and ice means it is y. In this session, the presenter will cover how grip is both measured and forecasted. He will give some practical tips on how it can be used to improve your planning and also how to use it to assess how well you have dealt with a storm. After this session, participants will be able to:
• Use grip to improve their decision-making capabilities.
• Use grip to improve the quality of their winter maintenance decision-making.
• Use grip to continually improve their winter maintenance operations and report to stakeholders how well they are performing.

Contributor/Source

Nick Johnson

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