In support of Transport Canada's call for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) proposals under the Strategic Highway Infrastructure Program, Alberta Transportation identified the need to develop an ITS blueprint for Advanced Traveler Information and Traffic Management Systems along Highway 2 between Edmonton and Calgary. A major component of this blueprint study was to design a network of Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) for Alberta's National Highway System in order to increase safety through enhanced winter maintenance practices and traveler information. The RWIS consultant used an innovative methodology that combined the road maintainers' knowledge, meteorological information, other relevant environmental and geographical data, traffic and safety data, and multi-jurisdictional station data into a Geographic Information System (GIS) model. The proposed RWIS architecture was developed in accordance with the ITS Architecture for Canada to facilitate data exchange with legacy systems and other ITS systems. The RWIS network may be able to feed relevant information to potential ATIS (Advanced Traveler Information System) and ATMS (Advanced Traffic Management System) for Highway 2. This will benefit the drivers with road and weather information in real time.
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