Citation

Toivonen K, Kantonen J. Transp. Res. Circular 2004; (E-C063): 50-57.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, U.S. National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Finnish road weather information system (RWIS) has been gradually developed into an aid to winter maintenance. Recently, winter maintenance of the road network, especially in commissioning of maintenance, has undergone major changes in Finland. Winter maintenance is being opened to competition, and the goal is that by the end of 2004 winter maintenance on all the public roads in Finland will be done by contractors selected through a bidding process. The new method of operation put pressure on the Finnish RWIS. It became necessary to make the RWIS and the information it contains available to all the contractors doing winter maintenance as easily and reliably as possible. To satisfy this need, a Web Road Weather project was started in the beginning of 2000, which resulted in a new web-based application for users of road weather information. Technically the web server retrieves the information desired by the user application from the database and image product servers and sends it to the user. Thus, the user does not have a direct connection to the Finnish Road Administration's data banks. Web Road Weather is part of the Finnish Road Administration's extranet solution. The extranet provides user identification and better information security. The user and the user's Web Road Weather application communicate only with a separate extranet server. The extranet server sees the Road Weather web services as its own and provides them as its own services to identified users with the correct user rights. With this new application it is possible to monitor ten different kinds of weather images, camera images from 240 road weather cameras, and road weather information from 320 road weather stations. The application is currently being used by both the Finnish Road Administration and external contractors. Total user amount is already almost 300.