T3e Webinar Overview

Connected Vehicles and Rural Road Weather Management

Date: Thursday, July 28, 2016
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM ET
Cost: All T3 webinars are free of charge
PDH: 1.0 View PDH Policy

T3 Webinars and T3e Webinars are brought to you by the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Professional Capacity Building (PCB) Program of the U.S. Department of Transportation's (U.S. DOT) ITS Joint Program Office (JPO). References in this webinar to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the public, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. DOT.

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Background

Each year, rural roadways experience a greater number of fatal crashes than urban roadways. Road Weather Information Systems (RWIS) have been adopted by rural transportation agencies to provide travelers better information about the impact of current weather conditions on the roadway; however, RWIS can only provide data for a specific location, and localized weather conditions require continuous high resolution road weather condition reporting. In response to the need for a more reliable system, connected vehicle (CV) technology introduced the concept of using vehicles to communicate current roadway conditions. This presentation will introduce new advances in the field of rural road weather management and provide insight into the research conducted at the University of Wyoming to implement a Connected Vehicle Road Weather Condition System.

Target Audience

The target audience includes academia and industry. Transportation planners, researchers, MPOs, and others who have an interest in how connected vehicle technology is being used to communicate weather-related roadway conditions will find interest in this webinar.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the foundations of rural road weather management
• Gain a perspective on the future use of CV data for road weather management
• Gain insight into the University of Wyoming's experience in graduate ITS education and research; Gonzaga University's experience starting a transportation undergraduate program to support modern needs of the transportation profession.

Host

Dr. Rhonda Young, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Gonzaga University; Adjunct Professor, Civil and Architectural Engineering, University of Wyoming
Dr. Rhonda Young joined academia in 2002 after working for 10 years as a transportation consultant. Dr. Young has worked extensively in the field of rural roadway operations in adverse weather conditions including development of weather responsive control logic and safety effectiveness of implemented strategies. Previous research projects led by Dr. Young have developed weather and speed behavior-based variable speed limit (VSL) system operational strategies for four VSL corridors in Wyoming. Evaluation of these VSL corridors found them to be effective at both reduction in crashes and roadway closures.

Two current research projects are applicable to adverse weather research. The first involves the evaluation of CV data as mobile weather sources for use in operational control strategies during adverse weather events. The second area is the adaptation of car following and lane changing driver behavior models for adverse weather conditions within traffic simulation models in order for those models to be sensitive to weather-based operational strategies.

Dr. Young is a member of the Transportation Research Board's Road Weather Committee (AH010) and is active internationally on the Standing International Road Weather Commission (SIRWEC). In addition to weather-based research, Dr. Young is also involved in engineering education serving terms as Chair, Vice Chair, and Executive Committee Member for the Institute of Transportation Engineer's Education Council. In collaboration with other faculty members, Dr. Young has organized national transportation educator conferences in 2009 and 2012.

Presenter

Britton Hammit, Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Wyoming and the Vienna Technical University of Applied Science
Britton Hammit is a master's degree student at the University of Wyoming and the Vienna Technical University of Applied Science. Britton began working on rural CV research under her adviser Dr. Rhonda Young in January of 2014 as an undergraduate student. After graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering, Britton continued the Rural CV research and defended her thesis on the topic in May 2015. In August, Britton moved to Vienna, Austria to attend the Vienna Technical University of Applied Science to complete the course work required for her Master in Transportation from the University of Wyoming. At the Vienna Technical University, Britton participated in one year of an Intelligent Transport System Master's Degree program. While in Austria, Britton remained involved in the remaining project work for using CV concepts in generating road weather data.