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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

MnDOT Winter Road Condition Dashboard

During winter storms, it is important for drivers to be aware of the latest conditions before they hit the road to ensure safe and efficient mobility across Minnesota roadways. Minnesota DOT has utilized automated road condition reporting through MDSS (Maintenance Decision Support System) to assist in the reporting of the conditions across the nearly 12,000 miles of roads maintained in Minnesota. Within the current systems, MnDOT is limited in the ability to evaluate the performance of the system and compare to actual conditions or times when staff override the automated road condition reports. A dashboard that shows the winter road conditions can provide critical information about the performance of the system and allow staff to be informed of how the system is performing across the entire network as opposed to individual locations when potential issues are identified. The dashboard developed as part of this project will allow MnDOT to evaluate historical road conditions, identify times when conditions were overridden and see actual conditions based on snowplow and other cameras. The objective of this project will be to develop a dashboard which can be utilized by MnDOT staff to evaluate historical road conditions. The dashboard will allow for comparing the automated MDSS road conditions to any overrides that are initiated by MnDOT. The dashboard will allow for MnDOT to evaluate the entire network through a single interface. This will allow for a more thorough analysis of the entire network to determine how much and how often the automated road conditions are being overridden as opposed to the ad-hoc reviews that are conducted when potential issues are identified. In addition to identifying the frequency of the overrides, MnDOT will be able to compare what the conditions were changed to, how frequently changes were made and how those conditions compared to MDSS. With the snowplow and other camera images, users will be able to evaluate the actual conditions on the roadway for comparison to the MDSS or overridden road conditions.