Vinterväghållning och expertsystem – en kunskapsöversikt - VTI

Winter Road Maintenance and Expert Systems – an Knowledge Overview
by Magnus Ljungberg
Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)
SE-581 95 Linköping Sweden
Summary
Increased need for an expert system in winter road maintenance
Today, there are no expert systems in use for winter road maintenance in the
operating districts. The need for such a system has increased in recent years,
partly because information to supervisors has become increasingly complex,
operating districts have become larger and many supervisors will be retiring
within the near future.
The aim of the literature study is to obtain a good overview of present knowledge
in winter road maintenance with particular attention to expert systems adapted for
this purpose. This is being done to chart the work already done and to identify
areas where knowledge is insufficient. It is also important to find areas where
there are diverging views.
The main areas in winter road maintenance dealt with are traffic safety, trafficability,
environment, methods, equipment, and road weather information systems.
The chapter on expert or knowledge systems deals with expert systems in general
and winter road maintenance systems in particular.
At present, there are no expert systems in use for winter road maintenance in
the operating districts. The expert systems that are in use are designed for automatic
de-icing on bridges. The need for an expert system for winter road maintenance
has increased in Sweden in recent years. The main reasons are that information
to supervisors has become increasingly complex, the operating districts
have grown in size and many supervisors will be retiring during the coming years.
The introduction of competition in road operation has also led to supervisors
being replaced when subcontractors are changed, which leads to a loss of specific
knowledge of a district. Supervisors thus face greater difficulties in acquiring long
experience of the districts.
The overview shows that there are many shortcomings in knowledge for
creating an efficient expert system based on a scientific approach.
The greatest deficiency is that there are few investigations of the influence of
individual winter road maintenance measures. Differences in road conditions with
different salt dosages, different types of snow plough and different capacities of
snowploughs are some of the areas that have been inadequately studied.
There are also major shortcomings in most other areas and the majority of
research projects in Sweden are over ten years old.
However, winter road maintenance is also an operation where much development
has been carried on within the organisation of the National Road Administration.
The organisation has not published its studies to the same extent as a university
would have done, which has caused much of the knowledge to remain unpublished.
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