Idaho Transportation Department and Vaisala Recognized for Exemplary Highway Program


Vaisala's collaboration with the Idaho Transportation Department has been recognized by the Road Safety Foundation and the United States Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as winners of the biennial National Roadway Safety Awards. The award winners were chosen for reducing fatalities and injuries on roadways through excellence and innovation in operations, planning, and design.



The Idaho Transportation Department, using Vaisala's pavement sensors that calculate grip or friction values, discovered that this value can also be used to measure the success of the department's winter road maintenance operations.  Idaho personnel developed several benchmark indexes that calculated operational performance, and were able to normalize any variance caused by storms and seasons. Vaisala supported this development by integrating the indexes into their RoadDSS Navigator software which allows for quick review of the indexes alongside other decision-making tools.



"Vaisala strives to develop and apply the latest technological advancements, not only on our own, but by helping solve the challenges our customers face", says Paul Bridge, Offering Manager and Meteorologist for Vaisala Roads. "We are very proud to hear that our technology has been acknowledged as the most innovative in the industry. This is very much our goal with regards to providing information services; working with our client to develop additional value from our sensing technology. You know it's a winner when our client refers to us as their partner."



Vaisala's road weather system provides real value to winter maintenance operations in Idaho. "We had a pretty significant year, this year (2012-13), and preliminary estimates, appears that we have had a 10-20% reduction in our seven (7) million dollar chemical usage budget," says Dennis Jensen, Mobility Services-Winter Maintenance Coordinator, Idaho Transportation Department.



For more information on the Road Safety Foundation award http://www.roadwaysafety.org/2013-national-roadway-safety-awards/



For more information, please contact:

Jon Tarleton, Senior Marketing Manager, Weather

Phone: +1-314-872-0509

Email: Jon.Tarleton@vaisala.com



About Vaisala Roads

Vaisala is the leading provider of road weather information products and services with over 30 years of experience globally. Vaisala have the most comprehensive weather management portfolio including observation systems and sensors; visualization and decision support tools; and traffic weather consulting services. Vaisala can supply and help design the complete road and rail weather data management solution starting from siting of weather monitoring stations to providing maintenance decision support algorithms and automated warning systems.



About Vaisala

Vaisala is a global leader in environmental and industrial measurement. Building on 75 years of experience, Vaisala contributes to a better quality of life by providing a comprehensive range of innovative observation and measurement products and services for chosen weather-related and industrial markets. Headquartered in Finland, Vaisala employs approximately 1400 professionals worldwide and is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki stock exchange. www.vaisala.com, www.twitter.com/VaisalaGroup.




All Topics