TY - JOUR
T1 - Integrated winter road maintenance management
T2 - New directions for cold regions research
AU - Hinkka, Ville
AU - Pilli-Sihvola, Eetu
AU - Mantsinen, Heikki
AU - Leviäkangas, Pekka
AU - Aapaoja, Aki
AU - Hautala, Raine
N1 - SDA: SHP: TransSmart
Project code: 100664
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - The purpose of winter road maintenance is to reduce the negative effect of snow and ice on traffic. The current literature on winter maintenance practices is split into two segments: means of forecasting weather in order to plan proper winter maintenance, and optimization of maintenance operations. There is relatively little literature on the opportunities that real-time information, e.g., from maintenance vehicles, would offer for combining these two segments and taking the applied research and practice one step further. It seems, however, that the lack of operational solutions has so far limited empirical research in favour of analysing prospects that the ubiquitous technologies could offer for winter maintenance. Recent field tests show that the technical obstacles to obtaining real-time information from maintenance vehicles can be overcome. Thus it is possible to enhance the benefits of winter road maintenance operations considerably through new designs and architectures. Improving the efficiency of vehicle fleets by using real-time information is one of the first realizable steps. Based on the analysis of current winter road maintenance ecosystems in several countries, this paper suggests how to make effective use of the transparency that real-time information exchange between different actors can offer. Transparent real-time information enables re-engineering of the entire winter maintenance ecosystem and assists road authorities in setting more precise, and at the same time more diverse, objectives for winter maintenance. This also involves real-time monitoring of service providers' performance and realization of these objectives.
AB - The purpose of winter road maintenance is to reduce the negative effect of snow and ice on traffic. The current literature on winter maintenance practices is split into two segments: means of forecasting weather in order to plan proper winter maintenance, and optimization of maintenance operations. There is relatively little literature on the opportunities that real-time information, e.g., from maintenance vehicles, would offer for combining these two segments and taking the applied research and practice one step further. It seems, however, that the lack of operational solutions has so far limited empirical research in favour of analysing prospects that the ubiquitous technologies could offer for winter maintenance. Recent field tests show that the technical obstacles to obtaining real-time information from maintenance vehicles can be overcome. Thus it is possible to enhance the benefits of winter road maintenance operations considerably through new designs and architectures. Improving the efficiency of vehicle fleets by using real-time information is one of the first realizable steps. Based on the analysis of current winter road maintenance ecosystems in several countries, this paper suggests how to make effective use of the transparency that real-time information exchange between different actors can offer. Transparent real-time information enables re-engineering of the entire winter maintenance ecosystem and assists road authorities in setting more precise, and at the same time more diverse, objectives for winter maintenance. This also involves real-time monitoring of service providers' performance and realization of these objectives.
KW - Business network redesign
KW - Internet of things
KW - Maintenance management
KW - Real-time information
KW - Technological exploitation model
KW - Winter road maintenance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84946866290&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.coldregions.2015.10.014
DO - 10.1016/j.coldregions.2015.10.014
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84946866290
SN - 0165-232X
VL - 121
SP - 108
EP - 117
JO - Cold Regions Science and Technology
JF - Cold Regions Science and Technology
ER -