A limited number of weather stations across Kent provide weather conditions on which gritting decisions are made. These decisions do not consider regional variations. Roads are gritted that don’t need to be. More road temperature data across more roads was needed.
OVERVIEW
Working with our consulting team and the University of Birmingham, we installed 120 road sensors to establish a thermal road map of the county. This provided a more detailed picture of road temperatures across a much larger geography.
The sensors give us a detailed temperature map.
BENEFITS
The tailored model allows Amey and Kent County Council to take localised weather forecasts and predict which of their 57 routes will need to be gritted on colder nights.
- Routes are now logged digitally with the progress of vehicles tracked from the depot.
- As a result the accuracy of gritting success rate has leapt from 50% to 98% in some areas.
- Ability to predict the road conditions saves the Council around £150-200k over the winter season.