There is significant interest among road authorities in measuring pavement conditions to perform appropriate winter road maintenance. The most common monitoring methods are based on pavement-mounted sensors. This study's hypothesis is that the temperature distribution in a pavement can be measured by means of a nonintrusive method to retrieve the topmost pavement temperature values. By utilizing the latest infrared (IR) technology, it is possible to retrieve additional information concerning both road temperatures and road conditions. The authors discovered that surface temperature readings from IR sensors are more reliable than data retrieved from traditional surface-mounted sensors during wet, snowy, or icy road conditions. It was also possible to detect changes in the road condition by examining how the temperatures in wheel tracks and in between the wheel tracks differ from a reference dry road condition. The conclusion was that nonintrusive measurement of the road temperature is able to provide an increase in relation to the knowledge about both the road temperature and the road condition. Another conclusion was that the surface temperature should not be considered as being equal to the ground temperatures retrieved from traditional surface-mounted sensors except under conditions of dry, stable roadways.

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Frost formation on roads may cause slippery conditions and thereby increase the risk of accident occurrence. Roads are often treated with preventive operations using de-icing agents (e.g. road salt), which are ideally planned and performed prior to frost formation. The decisions on when and where to treat different road stretches with salt are based on meteorological measurements and forecasts. This paper investigates how uncertainties in meteorological measurements for frost prediction at road weather stations affect the efficiency of winter road maintenance. Different types of uncertainties and errors are discussed, together with potential solutions. The effects on winter road maintenance efficiency are discussed in terms of energy and cost. It was found that improvements in frost warning accuracy and reliability can lead to considerable savings and more efficient winter road maintenance.

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