SOARS® 2017, Brittany Welch

Wyoming has various forms of hazardous weather, most of which occur in the winter. However, high winds occur year-round and pose the most danger to the freight traffic along the I-80 corridor with elevations of up to 8000 feet. Freight traffic makes up half of the daily average traffic volume along the corridor, making half of the traffic along I-80 at risk of being blown over during high wind events. In one year, the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) recorded over 700 commercial vehicle accidents and over 1,000 hours in road closures. The combination of accidents and road closures can cost trucking companies millions of dollars yearly. The Pikalert® System, developed by The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is being used in the WYDOT Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot (CV) in an attempt to alleviate the number of blowovers along I-80. Pikalert uses various algorithms to combine vehicle and weather data to generate warnings for users but was lacking a wind algorithm. A blowover algorithm was developed using a fuzzy logic methodology with the purpose of being integrated into Pikalert. The algorithm was adjusted based on outputs from case studies of increasing size. This resulted in a reliable algorithm that has the ability to identify roadways with high blowover risk for different vehicle types. The deployment and testing of the algorithm will aid in its performance during the verification period once implemented into Pikalert. This work was performed under the auspices of the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science Program. SOARS is managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate and the University of Colorado at Boulder.