Is It Safe To Drive?
Severe weather can create hazardous driving conditions. During inclement weather, how can drivers get
current information about Indiana roads? What are the road surface and sub-surface temperatures
throughout the state? How can I tell if road conditions are safe?
The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) maintains weather sensors and stations along the road network
throughout the state. The data from those sensors is available to a select group of winter road operation planners
to help manage road conditions. INDOT wanted to make this data available to local officials and the general public.
INDOT developed the
Road Weather Information System (RWIS) and made it
available via a web portal. The site pulls data from the weather sensor servers every fifteen minutes. Users can
browse the maps and select sensors for detailed information, or view summary tables of all the sensors. The
user can also label the maps with the most recent information from the sensors. There are currently 30 sensors
online with new ones being added as they become available.
This website is part of a larger effort to get decision-making data out to the general public, local and
federal decision makers. A main priority is to take existing web pages and applications that
are text-based and add meaningful mapping/GIS components to them.
Results
The RWIS portal is an efficient way to disseminate usable data, without requiring expertise in
geography or computer sciences. It has been very popular, especially during extreme weather events.
During a single large snow storm in December 2004, the site had tens of thousands of unique visitors
with over one hundred thousand page hits for the five days snow was on the ground. Drivers were able
to make intelligent, well-informed decisions about their travel plans.
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