Blowing and drifting snow is a common occurrence on roadways in cold regions that cause reduced visibility and snowdrifts on the roadway, resulting in hazardous road conditions and partial or total road closure. consequences include longer travel time, greater maintenance and snow control costs, and more vehicle accidents involving property damage, personal injury, and, in extreme cases, loss of life.passive snow control is the name given to methods offering some control over where wind-driven snow will or will not be deposited. passive snow control techniques include snow fences, shelterbelts, and design of aerodynamic roadway sections. currently, no widely acceptedalgorithmic methods exist for passive snow control on highways. themain objective of the project was to provide a tool for highway design and maintenance personnel to use in evaluating snow problem locations and identifying possible solutions, without requiring an extensive knowledge of passive snow control methods. to this end, an expert system, passive snow controller (pascon), was developed on an ibmpc microcomputer. pascon incorporates knowledge from a nationally recognized expert in passive snow control and from the literature. pascon includes five external programs for design procedures, computations, and graphics. several consultations with the expert system yielded results that agreed with the domain expert and with solutions worked out manually. this paper appears in transportation research record no. 1304, highway maintenance operations and research 1991.
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