Final report; June 2000¿Sept. 2002.

Midwest Transportation Consortium

NTL-ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT-Environment Impacts ; NTL-GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS-GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMSNTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-Highway Safety ; NTL-PLANNING AND POLICY-PLANNING AND POLICY ;

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Geographic information systems (GIS) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques were used to develop an intelligent

snow removal asset management system (SRAMS). The system has been evaluated through a case study examining

snow removal from the roads in Black Hawk County, Iowa, for which the Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa

DOT) is responsible. The SRAMS is comprised of an expert system that contains the logical rules and expertise of

the Iowa DOT’s snow removal experts in Black Hawk County, and a geographic information system to access and

manage road data. The system is implemented on a mid-range PC by integrating MapObjects 2.1 (a GIS package),

Visual Rule Studio 2.2 (an AI shell), and Visual Basic 6.0 (a programming tool). The system could efficiently be

used to generate prioritized snowplowing routes in visual format, to optimize the allocation of assets for plowing,

and to track materials (e.g., salt and sand). A test of the system reveals an improvement in snowplowing time by 1.9

percent for moderate snowfall and 9.7 percent for snowstorm conditions over the current manual system.

US Transportation Collection

MTC 3-A