- [Narrator] Winters are often brutal in north Texas.
With a fleet of 700 snow plows Tex DOT wants to make sure
that motorists can travel as safely as possible
during these dangerous conditions.
To improve this process
researchers are turning to technology to
develop a snow plow management system.
With onboard cameras, the system would allow the collection
of live images, of actual roadway and weather conditions,
that can be monitored from a central location.
- These 700 snow plows and their operators working
in extremely cold and dangerous conditions.
They don't have continuous communications with
the operation managers in the office.
We installed sensors, cameras, basically tablets
on the snowplows.
And we also created the GIA space, snowplow operations
management system that works with these sensors,
gets data from them.
So the operator in the office,
operation managers in the office,
has access to real time conditions
of where the snow plows are working and operating.
- At its most basic level it works just like a cell phone.
It's an eight inch tablet that you turn it on,
you swipe it up once, you select the only app on there.
And it activates.
There's one button you have to say run.
And then what the program does is, every 10 minutes,
when you're moving five miles an hour or faster,
it will take a picture and upload that picture
along with temperature data, GPS location information,
and it will all go up to a website
and it overlays on top of a RGIS map.
- This GIS system gets all the information, process them,
and basically present them on very easy to use
map based interfaces that operators can easily see
all the snow plows operating and click on each of them,
and see the information about a specific snow plow.
- If we got a heavy snowfall, say six inches
of snow in our Western counties, which is typical for us,
and then we didn't get as much snow in the Eastern counties.
We can visually see,
without making any contact with a driver,
without making any contact with a maintenance section,
I can see that that road is not clear,
that that road's in bad shape
and I need to reallocate some resources to address it.
- We successfully implemented the project in
Tex DOT Forth Worth district.
And also in two winter seasons we tested that
and the system also the GI system is also working,
map-based system.
So in two winter seasons, the operators use the system
successfully and the Tex DOT can extend that
to other districts that they need that easily.
- [Narrator] For more information,
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the Tex DOT research library
at the link shown below.