Wintersense: Demonstrating the potential of the IoT in winter road maintenance

在一个寒冷的冬季夜晚，英国公路管理部门可能会在3,500条盐渍路线上散布多达35,000吨的岩盐，以保持国家主要道路的开放和安全。如此大量的除冰剂的散布不仅会造成撒盐成本和对混凝土结构造成的损害方面的经济负担，而且还会给环境带来极大的破坏，因为它会给原本的淡水增加盐分。水道。尽管存在环境问题，但人们认为，减少道路事故和道路使用者延误所带来的预期节省更为重要。冬季维护工程师通过咨询道路天气信息系统（RWIS）来制定夜间决策，该系统将天气预报数据与道路温度和状况数据相结合。边缘的夜晚（路面温度预测接近冰点）是最成问题的。在这种情况下，公路工程师面临着一个困难的决定，是否盐网络。如果撒了盐，而不发生霜，那么就发生了不必要的财政支出。然而，如果不撒盐而发生霜冻，道路就会变得不安全，地方当局可能会受到法律的制裁。即使在当前的经济气候之前，英国的地方当局也面临着相当大的压力，要求他们证明他们的冬季维护预算实现了“最佳价值”。不幸的是，一再削减预算（2010年之前的暖冬在某种程度上是合理的）可能导致自满情绪和冬季维护制度准备不足。这在过去几个严冬中产生了重大的、非常明显的影响。因此，在新的财务制度下实现最佳价值是一项重大挑战。冬季道路养护需要抓住物联网带来的新机遇，使决策更加智能化。最新一代的RWIS基于基于路线的预测，考虑到当地地理与区域气候的相互作用，为每50米路段生成详细的路面温度模型。通过了解哪些路段可能会在夜间低于0 C阈值，公路工程师可以有选择地只处理受影响的路线，从而大大节省盐的使用。然而，这一点目前并未发生。在诉讼不断增加的环境中，从业者对基于模型输出而不是地面事实做出决策感到紧张。这意味着，现在迫切需要以前所未有的规模验证基于路线的道路天气预报。该提案旨在通过生产和部署嵌入物联网生态系统中的新一代低成本、支持互联网的传感器来解决这一问题。然而，这种方法不仅将提供一种监测和核查解决方案，而且有可能形成一种新的“即时预报”（即预测未来3小时）解决方案的基础，用于冬季道路维护。因此，该项目将在伯明翰现有的无线网络中开发和部署一些红外路面温度传感器，这些传感器将连接到一个专用的数据中心，该数据中心将管理实时馈送并实时更新道路天气预报，以促进公路工程师的主动决策。

On a cold night in winter with a frost forecast, UK highway authorities potentially spread up to 35,000 tonnes of rock salt over 3,500 salting routes in order to keep the nation's key roads open and safe. The spreading of de-icing agents in such quantities is not only a financial burden in terms of the costs of applying the salt and the damage it causes to concrete structures, but it can also be very damaging to the environment, adding salt to otherwise freshwater water courses. Despite the environmental issues, the perceived savings in reduced road accidents and road user delays are considered to be more important. Winter maintenance engineers base their nightly decision making by consulting a Road Weather Information System (RWIS) which combines weather forecast data with road temperature and condition data. Marginal nights (where the road surface temperatures are forecast to be close to freezing) are the most problematic. In this situation, highway engineers face a difficult decision of whether or not to salt the network. If salt is spread, but no frost occurs, then unnecessary financial expenditure has occurred. However, if salt is not spread and a frost occurs, the roads become unsecured and a local authority could be subject to legal action. Even before the current economic climate, local authorities in the UK were under considerable pressure to demonstrate that they were achieving 'best value' from their winter maintenance budgets. Unfortunately, repeated budget cuts (to some extent justified by a run of mild winters before 2010) can lead to complacency and a lack of preparedness in winter maintenance regimes. This has had significant, highly noticeable, implications over the last few severe winters. As such, there is a significant challenge in achieving best value under the new financial regime. It is here where winter road maintenance needs to embrace the new opportunities afforded by the Internet of Things to make decision making smarter.The latest generation of RWIS is based on route based forecasts which take into account how the local geography interacts with the regional climate to produce a detailed model of road surface temperatures for every 50m section of road. By knowing which sections of road are likely to fall below the 0C threshold on a night-by-night basis, highway engineers can selectively treat just the affected routes and thus make significant savings in salt usage. However, this is presently not happening. In an environment of increasing litigation, practitioners are nervous about making decisions based on model output as opposed to ground truth. This now means that the verification of route based road weather forecasts is urgently needed at an unprecedented scale. This proposal seeks to solve this problem by producing and deploying a new generation of low cost, internet enabled, sensors embedded within an Internet of Things ecosystem. However, this approach will not only provide a monitoring and verification solution, but also has the potential to form the basis of a new 'nowcasting' (i.e. forecast for the next 3 hours) solution for winter road maintenance. Hence, this project will develop and deploy a number of infrared road surface temperature sensors across an existing wireless network in Birmingham These sensors will be linked to a dedicated data hub which will manage the live feeds and update road weather forecasts in real-time to facilitate pro-active decision making by highway engineers.