Correct road maintenance is crucial for ensuring good traffic flow and to maintain safety standards for road users. Safety is one of the most critical factors in road maintenance with over 26,000 lives lost on EU roads alone with another 135,000 seriously injured with the total social cost estimated at €100 bn. Adverse weather conditions are the primary source of road accidents, with the risk increased by nine times on snowy roads and 20 times on icy roads.
Current conventional methods for monitoring and forecasting road conditions have several disadvantages such as; cannot present real-time road surface data for an entire region at road level or are too costly to implement for the complete road network. These disadvantages mean that winter road maintenance is still undertaken using the experience and decision making of the staff without the use of real-time data to aid decision making.
To address this need, Klimator presents its Road Status Information (RSI) technology, which uses novel algorithms to interpret four key data sources to monitor and predict road surface conditions on an entire road network with a well-designed and clear user-interface. Once the algorithms process the data, it is represented on a visual map, displaying the whole road network. RSI allows contractors to decrease 20-30% of winter road maintenance costs while increasing the safety and efficiency of the roads by keeping them open and decreasing costs (-5% vehicle wear, -20% fuel usage).
The data produced using this system is also provided to OEMs (car manufacturers) as a road condition and route based forecast mapping service, to give drivers real-time information to increase safety and increase the availability of autonomous features.
