Changeable weather conditions are very common in the UK. Winters are usually short, characterized by these changes and night time temperatures hovering around freezing. The conditions can, and often do, cause regional or local disruption.

Highway engineers are in the front line in facing this problem as they are responsible for the dense highway infrastructure and it being accessible and safe at all times. Undisrupted traffic flow, guaranteed safety and economic viability of the network are their goals, despite the challenging winter weather events.

Forecasting the localized and short-term winter weather events more than a few days in advance is difficult.  In order to make the right decisions and take the necessary action before the weather event occurs, highway engineers should employ a precautionary treatment regime. Precautionary treatment will ensure that salt is spread in advance of anticipated accumulations of frost, ice or snow on the highway. Timing is crucial in salting, and the highway engineers need the best possible information about road surface conditions across their network. Vaisala's related products and service offering provide the customer with this information. With the help of accurate and timely information, road engineers will be able to make the right decisions to ensure safe roads and smooth traffic.

Staffordshire County Council is one of the customers who rely on Vaisala's road weather products and services. For over a decade, Vaisala has worked with Staffordshire’s highway teams to develop the optimum solution for the best results. “Our key challenge is to keep our network safe without incurring any unnecessary expenditure,” says Paul Boss, Highways Asset Manager of Staffordshire Highways. “To do this, we need accurate forecasts, but even more crucial is the interpretation of this forecast information. We rely on Vaisala for this support and to deliver information in a format that helps us decide on the appropriate course of action.”

The Staffordshire authorities have recognized that uniform weather conditions do not always occur across the whole county. Additionally, differences in topography, land use, surface construction materials and sky-view factor can lead to certain stretches of highway being more or less at risk of ice formation than others. To identify, quantify and predict these differences would help target resources in the most risky areas, and this in turn would result in improved efficiency and cost savings. This crucial information is provided by Vaisala.

Paul Boss is happy with the range of products, services and support they receive from Vaisala: ”We’re extremely satisfied. We are able to fulfill our aims, and to achieve financial savings. A good example is the Route Optimization exercise Vaisala conducted in 2007. Based on Thermal Mapping results and regional topographical constraints, our treatment routes were redesigned. We can now confidently mobilize individual routes on the basis of their forecast minimum temperature. If we issue a full turnout across our total network, 57 treatment routes are required. However, on occasion we have mobilized as few as 10 routes to treat only the coldest sections of our network. This obviously has a significant impact on our annual costs.”

Staffordshire County Council’s successful partnership with Vaisala helps to deliver a safer road network to the motorist and tangible ongoing cost benefits to the county.

Vaisala’s comprehensive range of services is used by over 200 traffic weather customers around the world.