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.