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>> GARRETT DAWE: "Hello, I’m Garrett Dawe. I’m the ITS coordinator for MDOT’s North Region
and today we are in Waters, Michigan, in Otsego County along I-75
and we’re here to talk about the RWIS system that’s new to MDOT’s North Region, as well as the Superior Region.
Right behind me here is what we call an environmental sensor station and it’s a collection of these
that make up the road weather information system, what we refer to as RWIS.
And as you can see on the tower, there are several atmospheric sensors.
Starting with the air temperature sensor, which is the cylindrical sensor on the bottom of the tower there
and then moving up, we have a present weather invisibility sensor,
as well as an illumination light for maintenance purposes
and then near the top of the tower, there’s a camera that has eight preprogrammed positions that take still pictures
about every 10 minuets to verify what you're seeing as far as data.
What we’re looking at here is called an anemometer and it measures wind speed
and then at the very top is a cellular antenna and all the data is collected by these sensors
is stored in what is called an RPU on the tower itself and then that information is sent to some servers
through a private company via that cellular antenna.
Also, that goes along with these environmental sensor stations is a pavement sensor and subsurface probe
which are located out on the roadway, which we can talk about next.
As you can see now I’m approaching a hand hole
which contains wiring that runs back to the tower and to the remote processing unit
from these pavement sensors.
And this is really what our maintenance staff really likes to look at when they’re utilizing the RWIS system.
The sensor on the left out here is called an in-pavement sensor and it detects the condition of the roadway.
It will tell you if it's dry, if it's wet, if there’s snow on the road, if the potential for ice forming is there
or if there actually is ice on the road.
So that tells our maintenance staff if they need to come out and plow, if they need to come out and put salt or chemicals down
and then also in that pavement sensor is it can detect the percent of chemical on the roadways, which also tells our maintenance staff
if the amount of chemical out there now is sufficient or if more needs to go down.
On the right is what we call a subsurface probe, and that has a bunch of sensors that go down below the pavement about 6 feet
and they’re all temperature sensors and so they detect how deep the frost is underneath the roadway or if there’s frost at all
and that helps when we are putting weight restrictions on during the spring,
and can tell our maintenance staff when they can go on and ultimately when they come off.
Over here at the offices of the Otesgo County Road Commission with Greg Techel, one of their foremans and
he’s going to show us the RWIS system online and how it benefits his job."
>> GREG TECHEL: "What we have here is just a laptop and
you login and you can go to Northern Lower, which is what I do,
what we have is, for instance here, the Waters site, which we were at is showing 'dry.'
If you click onto the camera, there’s eight different pictures of I-75.
That’s 20 minutes away having to drive down in that area and check,
where you can literally click on to this Web site and you're there.
That’s from the Waters site where we were at. If you click on one of those, it’s a larger, more detailed
picture of it, and you can see road conditions.
It shows the date and the time and it helps tremendously in determining
whether or not to put salt on the road, or plow or what.
Way back when, we literally had to go out in a pickup truck and check or look at the bank temperature.
This has helped tremendously in making the job easier and more efficient.”
>> GARRETT DAWE: “Currently MDOT has 25 environmental sensor stations installed statewide -
13 of them are in the Upper Peninsula and 12 are in the northern Lower Peninsula.
The ultimate goal is to have many more than that installed statewide.
In the northern Lower Peninsula alone there will be 50
within 6 to 7 years, and the ultimate goal is to not only have them benefit our maintaining agencies and their response times
but also to have those stations work together to help forecast major weather events
and that will even better benefit the motoring public.”
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