Regional Pilot Weather Information System for Surface Transportation and Incident Management

WeatherShare is funded by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and covers a 20-county, Northern California region with approximately 4,000 miles of highways. Caltrans District 2 and adjacent counties have a wide array of data available detailing road and weather conditions in the region, including a growing Roadway Weather Information Systems (RWIS) network and weather stations maintained by other state and federal agencies. There is great potential for the use of such data for purposes ranging from maintenance and traveler safety to emergency medical response and homeland security. The goal of the project is to streamline and integrate currently available road weather data into one single source easily accessible by incident responders and potentially the traveling public, including those from Caltrans RWIS, California Data Exchange Center, National Weather Service, among other providers in the region. This relatively small ITS project follows a customized systems engineering process, and tools such as Project Plan, Concept of Operations, User Requirements Analysis, and Configuration Management Plan are utilized to ensure the success of WeatherShare. The first phase of the project has developed a proof-of-concept system, and the second phase has been planned for expanded geographic coverage, improved functionality, and more extensive evaluation.