Interest Areas
To help achieve our goals, Aurora members defined several program areas of special interest:
- Decision Support Systems
- Meso-scale Modeling
- Standards and Architecture
- Small-scale Modeling and Analysis
- Information Dissemination Technologies
- Equipment Evaluations
- Road Condition Monitoring
Decision Support Systems
Within this area, Aurora partners are working to design and implement decision support systems which will transform weather and road condition data into easily understandable formats, such as color-coded graphical displays, to allow for informed decision making capabilities.
Meso-scale Modeling
Activities in the area are targeted towards applying techniques developed at Environment Canada, the University of North Dakota, the National Weather Service Forecast Systems Laboratory, and other partner agencies to support detailed weather situation assessment and short-term forecasts on particular highway links.
Standards and Architecture
This interest area involves complementing current activities being undertaken by member agencies in the development and promotion of standardized RWIS system specifications, protocols, and architectures. Common design structures will reduce or eliminate proprietary systems, thus allowing for increased competition, reduced system cost, and improved data transferability between state agencies. Specific architecture components which may be addressed include open communication standards and open hardware platforms.
Small-scale Modeling and Analysis
Activities in this area will determine the scope for further detailing of road / weather modeling to cover road sections of as little as 5 or 10 meters. Inputs to these models would include information from stationary and mobile sensors and current state-of-the art meso-scale modeling techniques.
Information Dissemination Technologies
An important outcome of implementing RWIS is being able to provide weather and road condition information to the general public to allow informed traveling decisions to be made. Aurora partners are investigating current Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) traveler information efforts underway and identifying those by which weather and road condition information could be shared with the traveling public, as well as maintenance agencies.
Equipment Evaluations
Aurora serves as an information exchange forum for program members to share results of evaluations of newly developed RWIS technologies. Economies of scale result as individual agencies test RWIS components on behalf of all program members.
Road Condition Monitoring
This area involves investigating technologies for the purposes of improved roadway monitoring. Data obtained from these sources is being utilized to improve the accuracy of road condition models as well as for information dissemination purposes.