BEAR Scotland and Vaisala win Highways Magazine's Excellence Award for Highways Industry Product of the Year

BEAR Scotland and Vaisala, working in partnership have won the Excellence Award for Highways Industry Product of the Year, presented by Highways Magazine on October 10, 2013 at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.

BEAR Scotland and Vaisala received the award for the DSP310 Condition Patrol system, an innovative solution to obtain comprehensive, real-time road condition weather data from a mobile automated weather station.

BEAR is a service provider in the Scottish roads maintenance sector and is responsible for the Trunk and Motorway Networks across the North East, South East and North West regions. Vaisala is a global leader in environmental and industrial measurement. Using the latest weather technology designed for Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vaisala's leading weather observation products and decision support solutions help Road and Rail authorities worldwide optimize traffic safety, maintain mobility and improve operational efficiency.

Filling In the Gaps

Vaisala has an established road weather information system in Scotland consisting of weather stations and measurement equipment which are quality monitored in real-time by the company's Birmingham office 24 hours a day, seven days a week. BEAR has access to approximately 120 such weather stations reporting on road conditions and temperature via the Vaisala RoadDSS Navigator web application.

Historically data from the Road Weather Information System has been used to help manage winter salting actions. The data has been collected from static Road Weather stations strategically located across the road network. Following the severe winter of 2010 in Scotland, Vaisala and BEAR have been continuously working to improve the acquisition of more detailed weather data in order to better support decision making in winter weather road maintenance. Solutions were in place to collect temperature data however there were important gaps to fill. More detailed information on the actual road conditions (wet, dry, moist, ice, snow/frost and slush) as well as road slipperiness between the fixed weather stations was still missing.

DSP310 Condition Patrol

Initial work on a solution to acquire detailed surface condition data commenced in 2009 when BEAR began using the BETA version of new mobile technology being developed by Vaisala. Feedback from the initial trials by BEAR fed directly into the Vaisala development process.

Brian Davis, Vaisala Account Manager explains, "We welcomed the opportunity to work closely with BEAR to achieve their goal of obtaining real-time surface state data to support their winter treatment regime. Their feedback on the operational use of DSP310 Condition Patrol was invaluable in enhancing the effectiveness of the solution."

This led to the launch of Vaisala's DSP310 Condition Patrol solution in February 2012, a solution which mounts Vaisala sensors on the vehicle provide real-time monitoring of all road weather conditions. The in-cab display is realized using a smartphone running the Vaisala RoadDSS Navigator Mobile app. The DSP310 Condition Patrol is designed to provide a mobile solution to be deployed to collect critical road surface data at any given point on the network, at any time and viewed through the Vaisala RoadDSS Navigator software platform.

Brian Gordon, BEAR Scotland Managing Director, said: "DSP310 allows BEAR Scotland drivers, decision makers and Control Room staff to have access to data related to the state of the road in real-time across the entire network. This in turn enables faster, more accurately informed decisions and therefore more precise maintenance treatments to be applied during patrols, thus improving the safety of all road users in Scotland."