Leveraging Telematics for Winter Operations Performance Measures and Tactical Adjustment

Abstract

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) maintains 29,000 lane miles of roadway and operates a fleet of nearly 1100 snowplows and spends upwards of $60 million annually on winter maintenance operations. Since winter weather varies considerably, allocation of snow removal and deicing resources are highly decentralized to facilitate agile response. Historically, real-time two-way radio communication with drivers has been the primary monitoring system, but with 6 districts, 29 subdistricts, and over one hundred units it does not scale well for systematic data collection. Emerging technology such as real-time truck telematics, hi-resolution NOAA data, dash camera imagery, and crowdsourced traffic speeds can now be fused into dashboards. These real-time dashboards can be used for systematic monitoring and allocation of resources during critical weather events. This paper reports on dashboards used during the 2020-2021 winter season derived from that data. Nearly 13 million location records and 11 million dash camera images were collected from telematics onboard 1105 trucks. Peak impact of nearly 1570 congested miles and 610 trucks deployed was observed for a winter storm on February 15th, 2021 chosen for further analysis. In addition to tactical adjustments of resources during storms, this system-wide collection of resources allows agencies to monitor multiple seasons and make long-term strategic asset allocation decisions. Also, from a public information perspective, these resources were found to be very useful to agencies that interface with the media (and social media) during large storms to provide real-time visual updates on conditions throughout the state from pre-treatment, through cleanup.