MetService highlights road weather innovations

MetService highlights road weather innovations at NZTA NZIHT Conference

MetService will exhibit and conduct a workshop at the NZTA NZIHT 16th Annual Conference being held 1-3 November 2015 in the Bay of Islands.

The theme of the exhibition is ‘Just around the corner; the weather innovations set to transform the future’. The workshop session will discuss a new innovation programme to evaluate the use of vehicles to collect road weather data and expand New Zealand’s weather observation assets.

Adverse weather lowers productivity and impacts the New Zealand economy as commuters and transport operations are disrupted. Unfortunately, it also costs lives.

A two-year collaborative trial involving MetService and the NZ Transport Agency will commence in November 2015 along State Highway 29 over the Kaimai Range. Variable message speed limit signs, along with four road cameras and an automatic weather station at the summit, will be linked to the NZTA control centre. Operators there will constantly evaluate the prevailing environmental conditions and the available data and remotely update the variable message signs.

Transport Agency chief safety advisor Colin Brodie says the trial aims to encourage people to drive at safe speeds when rain, ice and fog hit the Kaimai Range.

“Our data shows that over 70 percent of the crashes on the Kaimai Range happen in wet weather, and that over 40 percent of these were caused by drivers travelling too fast for the conditions,” he says.

MetService believes that advances in meteorological science, and new and innovative sensor technology and data delivery channels, will in the near future provide transport agencies and road users with more accurate and immediate information about road conditions so that they can react to changing conditions quickly and safely.

MetService Business Development Manager Peter Fisher sees the connected car being a significant opportunity for the future. Research company Gartner believes there will be a quarter of a billion connected vehicles on the road by 2020.

“By gathering data from connected cars, we can build a more accurate picture of the road weather situation,” says Fisher.

“Having access to important data such as road temperature, precipitation intensity and visibility will enable us to provide greater decision support to transport agencies, operators and the designers of smart city infrastructure,” he says

Fishers adds, “and being able to communicate with drivers via mobile apps, or directly into their cars, will help drivers make informed decisions about road conditions and congested routes.”

ENDS

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