Departments of Transportation (DOTs) personnel are often required to consult numerous weather sources and, in many cases, interpret weather data in an attempt to determine the impact of the weather on their local maintenance operation. The ability to obtain accurate, high resolution, weather forecast information along road segments is difficult and time consuming. This inefficient process can often result in frustration, misinterpretation of environmental conditions, and poor decisions. These deficiencies led the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to support the development of a prototype winter road Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS). The MDSS is designed to provide guidance on winter maintenance decisions (treatment times, types, rates, and locations) specific to winter road maintenance routes. In fiscal year 2000, the US FHWA Office of Transportation Operations (HOTO) Road Maintenance Management Program began an initiative to gather surface transportation weather decision support requirements from State DOT personnel. In addition, the Office of Federal Coordinator for Meteorology (OFCM) together with the FHWA, co-sponsored symposiums on Weather Information for Surface Transportation (WIST). Utilizing information obtained from these outreach activities, the FHWA began a project in fiscal year 2001 to develop a conceptual prototype MDSS tailored for winter road maintenance decision makers. The program was extended into 2002 with the objective of developing and demonstrating a functional prototype MDSS and releasing the prototype technology on a non-exclusive basis to the surface transportation community. The MDSS technologies (Release-1) were made available in September 2002.
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