Sustainable Optimization of Winter Road Maintenance Services Under Real-time Information

Abstract

In the last couple of years the climate change is becoming more and more obvious. The temperature extremes are increasing, both maximum temperatures in the summer, as well as temperature minimums in the winter. This causes severe problems for the winter road maintenance service that has to deal with sudden cold spells followed by precipitation and difficulties it brings with. The research was conducted by reviewing present situation of winter road maintenance service of Kraljevica - a city with lot of everyday commuters toward two larger urban areas, Crikvenica and Rijeka. The problem arises when the cold front brings unusual weather conditions. The objective of this research is to provide a sustainable optimization of winter road maintenance service by maximizing the potential of the service to ensure steady traffic conditions. The problem was reviewed through a vehicle routing model. The model has been used to review the current situation in winter road cleaning based on the weather conditions over the last five years, and the worst case scenario was chosen for the simulations. The winter road cleaning optimization was carried out, and it led to possible solutions for adjustments of the winter road maintenance service in the city of Kraljevica. The results of the optimization have shown that there is room for improvement of the current winter road maintenance service conditions in the city, making it more sustainable in the future. Further, models presented in this paper could be used for improvement of maintenance services in other urban areas as well. Suggested possibilities could be used for service improvements, as well as cost and time optimization of the city budgets.