Identification

Title

Developing a Department of Transportation winter severity index

Abstract

Adverse weather conditions are responsible for millions of vehicular crashes, thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars per year in economic and congestion costs. Many transportation agencies utilize a performance or mobility metric to assess how well they maintain road access; however, there is only limited consideration of meteorological impacts to the success of their operations. This research develops the Nebraska winter severity index (NEWINS), which is a daily event-driven index derived for the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT). The NEWINS includes a categorical storm classification framework to capture atmospheric conditions and possible road impacts across diverse spatial regions of Nebraska. A 10-yr (2006–16) winter season database of meteorological variables for Nebraska was obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Information. The NEWINS is based on a weighted linear combination applied to the collected storm classification database to measure severity. The NEWINS results were compared to other meteorological variables, many used in other agencies’ winter severity indices. This comparison verified the NEWINS robustness for the observed events for the 10-yr period. An assessment of the difference between days with observed snow versus days with accumulated snow revealed 39% fewer snow-accumulated days than snow-observed days. Furthermore, the NEWINS results highlighted the greater number of events during the 2009/10 winter season and the lack of events during the 2011/12 winter season. It is expected that the NEWINS could help transportation personnel allocate efficiently resources during adverse weather events. Moreover, the NEWINS framework can be used by other agencies to assess their weather sensitivity.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7h996s3

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-08-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact