Evaluating Quality and Value of Road Weather Information

Road weather information is used by transportation agencies for maintenance decision making, traffic management, and other operational activities that are impacted by weather condition. In 2007 the FHWA Road Weather Management Program initiated a baseline study to characterize the quality and value of road weather information and to establish a framework for tracking and monitoring these attributes over time. The results of the study are intended to be used by surface transportation weather data users and providers as a benchmark for identifying needs and measuring improvements in road weather information resulting from advanced technologies and tools for data collection, communication, and management such as Clarus. Two online surveys have since been conducted and summarized for this study, one in 2008 and the other in 2010. The surveys focused on the content and usefulness of road weather information as evaluated by transportation agencies presently using this information for weather-responsive advisory, control, and treatment strategies. The characterization used attributes that the majority of users felt were important and directly applicable to weather information and associated products. In addition to importance, six quality attributes were used to describe quality, namely (a) accuracy and precision, (b) completeness, (c) relevance, (d) currency and latency, (e) timeliness and reliability, and (f) ease of use. This paper discusses the results of the 2008 and 2010 surveys, describes how the quality and importance of road weather information have changed between both surveys, explains the nature and sources of the observed differences, and recommends ways to improve or enhance the quality assessment process.