Sustainability and precision in winter maintenance

The maintenance of road systems is a key factor for safe driving operations. In winter, this maintenance includes, in particular, clearing snowfall and spreading grit to prevent slippery conditions on pavements, country roads, motorways and private areas such as car parks in municipalities. This is necessary for road safety, but causes considerable environmental pollution and resource consumption. The spreading of salt causes damage to roads, vehicles, roadside green spaces and trees as well as groundwater. Today, gritting routes are firmly planned, and the daily individual gritting operations are triggered by those responsible on the basis of usually very little weather data and selective checks of road conditions. Mild winters make decision-making more difficult as, on the one hand, gritting is always carried out for safety reasons and, on the other, there is a high risk of carrying out unnecessary gritting operations. The first pilot systems based on IoT technology that can generate such information are already being trialled (e.g. Lippe district, Paderborn district or ASP Paderborn). However, there are both organisational and technical obstacles to the widespread use of such systems. 

Better information (current real-time data, data with a finer local resolution) on current road conditions, real-time access to planning data (e.g. predefined waypoints and special restrictions) and more precise automatic gritting have the potential to enable more targeted and precise clearing and gritting operations. This would increase road safety on the one hand and reduce resource consumption and environmental impact on the other. 

The solution approach comprises two dimensions: 

(1) A technical IoT system that is easy to use and can be customised to the respective deployment locations to record road condition information in real time. It also records expert knowledge, digitises it and links the information with the specialist knowledge. This information is then made available to users via standard interfaces. 

(2) Furthermore, an organisational and process analysis is to be carried out in order to uncover the obstacles to the introduction of such digital systems. The knowledge gained will then be integrated into the IoT system.