4. New technologies and methods in winter service
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IP0124 - A Lane-Keeping Support System for Snow Removal Vehicles in Poor Visibility from a Snowstorm
In recent years, the cold snowy regions of Japan have been experiencing extreme snowstorms because of climate change. There have been many cases of vehicles being stranded in a blizzard or traffic problems such as long hours of road closures during such extreme snowstorms. Needs for a support technology for snow removal vehicles, which enables them to perform safe operations and open roads as soon [...]
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IP0224 - Advanced Salt Management System for Municipalities Pilot Program
FLODRAULIC and the University of Guelph are partnering with the Ontario Good Roads Association (OGRA) and four (4) municipalities to create a pilot study. This study will focus on the development of the next generation of smart salt trucks. These trucks have more advanced control systems to apply the brine and rock salt at an optimum combination to achieve the desired road safety with less adverse [...]
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IP0106 - An Automatic Architecture Designing Approach of Convolutional Neural Networks for Road Surface Conditions Image Recognition: Tradeoff between Accuracy and Efficiency
Winter road maintenance (WRM) plays a critical role in ensuring road safety and traffic mobility during the winter seasons. However, due to the vast areas that need to be monitored and serviced, WRM operations incur substantial costs pertaining to labors, materials, equipment, etc. Thus, time and effort must be put forth to seek effective ways to minimize these costs while maintaining a high level [...]
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IP0220 - Automatic control of the spreading instructions according to the surface temperature
The automation of tasks performed by human beings is a societal observation. The connectivity of objects combined with artificial intelligence is increasingly entering our lives, including those of road operating services. Combined with non-contact infrared temperature measurement, automatic control of the dosage setpoint is a technology that allows the quantity of flux used to treat winter road phenomena [...]
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IP0100 - BRINE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE WINTER SERVICES
Brines made from sodium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride are of great importance for highly efficient, sustainable, and cost-minimized winter services. There are two options: either buying brine from the market or producing it yourself at the winter service locations. In a research project on behalf of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) that was completed in 2021, real [...]
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IP0063 - COMPATIBILITY OF AN IN-ROAD ELECTRIC ROAD SYSTEM WITH WINTER SERVICE OPERATIONS
Winter Maintenance and in-road Electric Road System. Electric Road Systems (ERS) is a technology area with immense potential to reduce fossil fuel dependency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce air pollution as well as reduce noise in urban environments, while increasing energy efficiency in the transport sector. This new technology could be deployed on all the main road corridors to decarbonize [...]
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IP0210 - Concrete protection against frost and deicing chemicals
Concrete surfaces are common in all fields of engineering. Transport Research Centre – CDV, has been involved in studying the issue of an impact of winter maintenance and the way to extend the life of concrete road structures. We use procedures according to Czech and European standards and develop new laboratory tests that simulate the real behavior of structures or the effectiveness of proposed [...]
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IP0249 - Connected vehicle data innovating winter maintenance – Road surface information gives deep insights on the road network
Rijkswaterstaat is the Highways authority of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Waterworks. Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) is responsible for winter maintenance on all the federal roads of the Netherlands. Mainport Rotterdam, and several other road authorities also fall under RWS care. This governmental and legal responsibility comes with the directive to put every effort in providing safe roads in all [...]
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IP0279 - Development and test operation of On-Vehicle Residual Salt Sensor System which measures the salinity continuously on dry expressway
Japan is the rare regions in the world where a large amount of snow falls in urban areas. The reasons is that Mountain Chain runs through the middle of Japan, and when the monsoon from the continent crosses the Sea of Japan, it absorbs moisture from the sea surface, causing a large amount of snow to fall along the Sea of Japan side. About 20 million people live in these zones, and special countermeasures [...]
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IP0034 - Development of a doctrine on the use of abrasives in France
Development of a doctrine on the use of abrasives in France A.Escal – S.Gaudé – D.Giloppé – L.Burghgraeve - R. Reiff Abrasives have been used for a long time and quite frequently for winter service, however the materials and practices are very diverse and there are currently no reference documents in France. The poor environmental connotation of salt means that road operators regularly ask [...]
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IP0151 - Development of a nature-based solution for the treatment of road runoff charged in road salt
Up to 2.000.000 tons of road salt (mainly NaCl) are applied each year on the French road network. One part of these products is directly transported into the surrounding environment (dispersion by projection, wind transport, …), the other part is dissolved in rainwaters/runoffs ultimately collected by treatment systems (e.g. stormwater retention ponds). Even though these systems can remove/retain [...]
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IP0122 - Development of Anti-icer Spreading Support Technology Based on Operator’s Mental Workload Evaluation
In Japan, the road administrators are attempting to improve the efficiency of their winter services by carefully choosing the time and road sections for anti-icer spreading based on the specific road surface conditions that induce traffic problems due to slippery roadways. When performing such spreading, it is vital to accurately judge the road surface conditions and perform the proper operation. [...]
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IP0038 - DEVELOPMENT OF AUTONOMOUS SNOW BLOWER USING QUASI-ZENITH SATELLITE SYSTEM ON THE EXPRESSWAY IN JAPAN
The rotary snow blower vehicle operated for removing accumulated snow on road shoulders must be performed even in the conditions of a poor visibility due to a snowstorm or road markings completely covered by snow. The operators of the vehicle have to pay full attention to avoid contacting road structures and ordinary cars passing just beside the snow blower. Therefore, we have developed a high-precision [...]
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IP0149 - Evaluating the benefits of FS50 through a collaborative national road administration and local highway authority winter research programme
The standard method for precautionary and reactive anti-icing treatments used by Highways England and East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) is to spread salt on the carriageway at a 70% dry salt to 30% brine (FS30) ratio. Over the past decade, this ratio has been used, effectively preventing ice formation and keeping our customers safe. However, previous research has indicated that spreading salt [...]
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IP0152 - Evaluation of de-icing agents for winter road maintenance
The use of de-icing agents is now considered a very effective measure against winter slipperiness. They lower the freezing point of water. They not only remove slipperiness by melting snow and ice. A preventive application can also prevent slipperiness or reduce the effect of slipperiness caused by less solid and therefore particularly dangerous ice. In order to ensure that the agents applied before [...]
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IP0134 - Feasibility Examination for a Sidewalk Snow-Melting System in Hokkaido That Uses Renewable Energy
In Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, the winter is severe and roads often become very slippery. Many people, mainly elderly, are injured by falls on slippery winter roads and are transported to hospitals. In addition, tourists, including those from abroad, who are not accustomed to walking on winter roads, have been increasing. Therefore, securing safe winter walkways in Hokkaido has become [...]
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IP0013 - Floating Car Data in Winter Maintenance operations
The last time the winter maintenance experienced a technology disruption was with the introduction of RWIS stations during the 80s. Since then, there has been a lot of improvements and optimizations of operations, but no revolutionary technological advancements. That is until 2020 when connected vehicles started measuring friction and its surrounding environmental state at an extreme scale. Without [...]
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IP0074 - Implementation of new Winter Maintenance Strategies in Germany
In Germany in the 1980´s the pre-wetted spreading was developped and intensively tested for practical use. Subsequently pre-wetted spreading was more and more implemented. Today pre-wetted spreading is a good standard for all weather conditions, not only in Germany, but also in many countries of the world. Through the last years in Germany indeed winter maintenance is more and more rearranged to [...]
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IP0196 - In Cab Turn-by-Turn Snow Plow Navigation System
The Niles, Illinois Public Works Department always takes steps to increase the efficiency of its snow/ice operations. One of the more remarkable accomplishments has been the optimization of the snow removal routes, and using off the shelf navigation units to provide in cab turn-by-turn directions to drivers. Niles is a suburb of Chicago with 30,000 residents and maintains 115 lane miles of Village [...]
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IP0029 - Minimizing corrosion effects of deicing agents in winter maintenance
Winter Maintenance and de-icing salts are the means of providing passengers with a high level of safety and comfort despite snowfall, frost, freezing rain and freezing wetness. Every year, the Austrian Federal Railways (OEBB) invests around € 40 million in winter maintenance to ensure fast and safe passenger transport. Around 5,000 km of rail network and 1,100 stations are cleared by machine and [...]
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IP0030 - New Technologies and Methods in Winter Service on Scottish Trunk Roads
Transport Scotland has contracts in place with Operating Companies (OCs) to ensure Scottish trunk roads are safe, efficient and well managed. This includes the winter service. Work is carried out by OCs working under separate contracts. These contracts are divided into 4 regional units (South-West, South-East, North-West and North-East). The two south units have been retendered and our Network Management [...]
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IP0340 - Objectives and advantages of a fixed thawing-agent spraying system - the case of an installation renewal on Swiss motorways with innovative human-machine interface
For winter operations, installations of fixed systems for spreading thawing agents have become a widely accepted alternative to classical mobile spreading with many examples all over Europe, North America and Asia. Thanks to several professional and academic studies, there is a better understanding of the advantages of such installations and the conditions for which these advantages can be taken. [...]
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IP0015 - On-board cameras
Collecting information about the weather conditions is crucial to provide fast and reliable winter maintenance. Fully-equipped meteo stations provide detailed data but they are expensive and cover only a small area. A good and cost-effective alternative could be on-board cameras. The cameras mounted on the snowplow decks provide live view of the road conditions. It proved to be a dependable source [...]
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IP0265 - Optimizing Winter Maintenance Operations with Stacked Technology Solutions
Public agencies responsible for winter maintenance operations have improved performance by utilizing emerging technologies to optimize snowplow routes, provide navigation to drivers, and fleet telematics to track location and operational parameters- material spread rates and plow usage. Varying levels of sophistication exist across these individual techniques. Route optimization has a wide range of [...]
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IP0341 - PREVENTIVE FROST DETECTION AS A SUSTAINABLE PLANNING CONCEPT FOR NON-INVASIVE SENSORS
For several decades, technologies for measuring the condition of the pavement have been developed around the world using non-invasive (remote) pavement condition sensors, the main advantage of which is to be easier to install, eliminating the need for long-term closing of traffic lanes and cutting the pavement as in the case of traditional, embedded pavement sensors. Over the years, these non-invasive [...]
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IP0293 - Research of Highway Traffic Operation Monitoring Technology in Winter Based on UAV
In view of the fact that the emergency lane was often occupied when the expressway was congested in the severe weather environment in winter, which affected the passage of emergency rescue vehicles, based on UAV technology, transmitting the real-time information to the ground control system through the image return system, management department can quickly grasp the real-time information of the expressway [...]
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IP0205 - Residual Salt and Winter Road Maintenance – a Way to Save Salt, Environment and Money
Unpredictable weather, short time frames and requirements of high quality can make a challenge of the winter road maintenance. The project "Dynamic Forecast Controlled Winter Road Maintenance" has been aimed at developing a solution to simplify the data handling from road weather forecasts and simplify decisions for the winter maintenance contractor. This project has earlier shown that it is possible [...]
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IP0078 - Snow removal truck operation support system using Quasi-Zenith Satellite System
Niigata Prefecture, Japan is a rare heavy snowfall area in the world, so that snow removal work on roads is indispensable for safety management of road traffic. In addition to the aging of skilled workers and labor shortages in recent years, there is a problem that this important snow removal work accounts for most of the maintenance cost, and work reform was necessary for the purpose of reducing [...]
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IP0105 - Spatial Mapping of Winter Road Surface Conditions via Deep Learning and Geostatistical Techniques
Road surface condition (RSC) is a crucial factor that is often considered in winter road maintenance (WRM) as it provides information that is needed for implementing more timely snow and ice removal operations. Roadway administrators and transportation agencies have been utilizing real-time RSC information collected via road weather information systems (RWIS) to make more informed decisions on their [...]
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IP0139 - Testing self-de-icing asphalt on England’s strategic road network - have we found the Holy Grail of winter service?
Winterpave is an anti-icing additive for asphalt mixes, developed by Iterchimica, to provide resilience against ice formation without the need for salt treatments via traditional salt spreading techniques. The additive contains a de-icer which, migrates to the road surface. The de-icer then acts to disrupt the formation of ice on the road surface and provide a de-bonding layer in the event of snow. [...]
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IP0200 - Tests of alternative liquid spreading materials
In the past years, the use of liquid spreading materials in winter service becomes more and more a standard method in Vienna. This allows a more efficient use of de-icing chemicals even compared with pre-wetted spreading. New vehicles can spread pre-wetted salt using a spreading dish or brine using a spraying bar. Typically, sodium chloride brine mixed in place using water and salt from silo storage [...]
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IP0156 - The technical control of salt spreaders in Wallonia
The Public Service of Wallonia, southern region of Belgium, manages nearly 8,000 km of roads and motorways treated in winter. The spreading and snow removal operations are mainly outsourced to private contractors. In order to ensure the quality of the work carried out by these contractors, it is important to check that the salt spreaders are correctly adjusted to ensure that they are spreading the [...]
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IP0082 - Wind mitigation effects on a road at an apertural area between metal snow-fences during blowing snow
Blowing and drifting snow on highways can disrupt traffic, sometimes causing accidents due to low visibility and stacking vehicles in snow during heavy snowstorms in cold regions like Hokkaido, Japan. Efforts to design metal snow-fences (hereafter referred to simply as “snow fences”) to mitigate blowing and drifting snow on highways have been studied since the 1960s. During blowing snow events, [...]
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IP0147 - Winterlife – Effective, sustainable and non-corrosive deicing agents in winter maintenance
With an average of 20 to 30 snowfall days and 40 to 70 days with hoarfrost and freezing rain in Austria, winter maintenance is one of the most important tasks to provide transport infrastructure at a high level of safety and availability. The quick removal of ice and snow with grit and deicing agents is, therefore, a priority on road and rail in order to guarantee high customer satisfaction. However, [...]
