Weather Integration in Traffic Management Center Operations

Cities and metropolitan areas throughout the country rely on Traffic Management Centers (TMC’s) to monitor, control and optimize the flow of traffic on freeways and arterial roads. These centers acquire data from various sources including video cameras, loop detectors, and other sensors to spot and manage unsafe or unstable traffic conditions resulting from high traffic volumes, accidents, work zones, special events, weather and other incidents. While adverse weather is one of the major sources of accidents and delays on the highway network, a recent FHWA study titled “Integration of Emergency and Weather Elements into TMC’s” revealed very limited integration and application of weather information in TMC operations across the country, and concluded that most centers are still very reactive, rather than proactive, when it comes to weather. The study came up with a number of recommendations to help agencies better utilize and incorporate weather in their business processes, including the development of a self-evaluation guide for identifying their weather integration needs. This paper describes the set of guidelines FHWA developed to assist agencies in evaluating their TMC weather integration practices and needs, and how the guidelines were used by the Sacramento and Milwaukee TMC’s to evaluate their current practices and develop weather integration plans. The guidelines utilize relevant concepts, tools and procedures identified in prior studies as well as other considerations a TMC should address before pursuing a weather integration initiative. As part of this effort, FHWA developed an electronic version of the guidelines to simplify and facilitate the TMC self-evaluation.