More than smart pavements: connected infrastructure paves the way for enhanced winter safety and mobility on highways

Abstract

Currently, there is an urgent demand for more cost-effective, resource-efficient and reliable solutions to address safety and mobility challenges on highways enduring snowy winter weather. To address this pressing issue, this commentary proposes that the physical and digital infrastructures should be upgraded to take advantage of emerging technologies and facilitate the vehicle-infrastructure integration (VII), to better inform decision-makers at various levels. Driven by the paradigm shift towards more automation and more intelligent transportation, it is time to reimagine the vehicle-infrastructure ecosystem with the cold-climate issues in mind, and to enhance communications and coordination among various highway users and stakeholders. This commentary envisages the deployment of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies to bring about transformative changes and substantial benefits in terms of enhanced winter safety and mobility on highways. At the center of the commentary is a conceptualized design of next-generation highways in cold climates, including the existing infrastructure entities that are appropriate for possible upgrade to connected infrastructure (CI) applications, to leverage the immensely expanded data availability fueled by better spatial and temporal coverage. The commentary also advances the idea that CI solutions can augment the sensing capabilities and confidence level of connected or autonomous vehicles. The application scenarios of VII system is then briefly explored, followed by some discussion of the paradigm shift towards V2X applications and a look to the future including some identified research needs in the arena of CI. This work aims to inspire dialogues and synergistic collaborations among various stakeholders of the VII revolution, because the specific challenges call for systematic, holistic, and multidisciplinary approaches accompanied by concerted efforts in the research, development, pilot testing, and deployment of CI technologies.

Roles of mortar volume in porosity, permeability and strength of pervious concrete

“…2 The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. 3 CIFI Group, Shanghai, China. 4 The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.…”

“…However, large areas of impervious ground surface could cause many problems, such as the heat island effect, increased surface runoff, and blockage of underground water cycle etc. [1][2][3][4][5]. Pervious concrete, which is designed to be porous to allow permeation of water and air, is being employed to replace the impervious ground pavement so as to combat the above mentioned environmental and drainage problems [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Winter Road Friction Estimations via Multi-Source Road Weather Data—A Case Study of Alberta, Canada

“…For instance, by providing real-time road condition estimations via online platforms (e.g., 511), trip makers will be able to adjust their travel plans and divert accordingly to avoid potential accidents and traffic delays. Likewise, this tool, once refined and tested with more data, can also be integrated into vehicle to everything (V2X) technologies [39][40][41] to provide real-time road surface conditions information for improved safety before, during, and after inclement weather events. Such information can also be utilized by winter road maintenance personnel as the maps would provide information pertaining to dangerous road sections so that maintenance vehicles could be dispatched in a more efficient and timely manner to perform location-specific and targeted maintenance operations to ensure the safety and mobility of the winter travelling public.…”

The Conceptual of Pavement Management System Based on IoT, Big Data, and Data Mining in Indonesia

“…Technology-based automation can significantly increase the Pavement Management System's (PMS) efficiency. Some studies have shown the effectiveness of IoT and big data technologies' effectiveness in road and bridge preservation [9].…”