Open AccessEstimation of winter road maintenance costs using climate data
Author(s) -
Venäläinen Ari,
Kangas Markku
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
meteorological applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1469-8080
pISSN - 1350-4827
DOI - 10.1017/s1350482703005073
Subject(s) - estimation , environmental science , variation (astronomy) , computer science , environmental resource management , transport engineering , meteorology , geography , engineering , physics , systems engineering , astrophysics
In Finland, winter road maintenance has been privatised, and the use of reliable predictors to measure the harshness of winter conditions has become even more important. Several indices have been developed to estimate the difficulty of winter conditions; however, many of these indices require relatively complicated input data and are in that sense vulnerable –for example, to changes in the meteorological station network. In the current study the year‐to‐year variation of the climatological variables describing maintenance costs were compared with the variation in costs. This made it possible to make a qualitative interpretation of the costs. This approach is ‘simple enough’ for its use to be easily accepted both by the contractors responsible for winter road maintenance and also by the administrators responsible for covering the maintenance costs. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society