Patent Document ID: 9262559
Application ID: 13753114
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of evaluating and identifying appropriate maintenance responses in a winter transportation infrastructure, comprising: ingesting input data from a plurality of external databases, the input data including 1) collected winter transportation infrastructure maintenance data, the collected winter transportation infrastructure maintenance data including a plurality of treatment data, road network data, weather data, and component apportionment data and 2) observed transportation infrastructure data, including weather data, environmental data, roadway characteristics data, maintenance resources data, and maintenance policies data to a plurality of modules configured to perform multiple data processing functions to 1) model a performance of the winter transportation infrastructure maintenance activities and 2) model roadway conditions with maintenance responses to weather conditions experienced in at least a portion of a transportation infrastructure; quantifying the collected winter transportation infrastructure maintenance data by applying the multiple data processing functions to associate one or more of maintenance actions, road network information, weather events, and specific maintenance component applications by receiving GPS data and lane position data from treatment data comprised of raw GPS-tagged vehicle reports and data reported directly by maintenance vehicle operators to extract a heading and speed of a reporting maintenance vehicle, define a coordinate system along the transportation infrastructure using successive positions of maintenance vehicles along this coordinate system, and define directions of travel of maintenance vehicles to assign the collected winter transportation infrastructure maintenance data to the transportation infrastructure, and to segment the transportation infrastructure using the location, direction of travel, and lane position data to associate and calculate values for plurality of segments that are pre-defined by agency specification, wherein the GPS data and the lane position data enable an aggregation and interpretation of the raw GPS-tagged vehicle reports and of time-tagged vehicle reports in the treatment data into comprehensive, spatially, and temporally-cohesive representations of collective fleet maintenance activities during one or more treatment activities on pre-defined segments of the transportation infrastructure that are comparable to simulated maintenance responses and agency treatment guidelines, and wherein the GPS data and the lane position data permit detection and prevention of erroneous accrual of data either due to GPS stray while an associated vehicle is stationary or due to road network complexities such as intersecting or vertically stacked network segments, and specifying component materials and apportionments of component materials in at least one selectable mixture comprising the component apportionment data to compare utilization of the component materials and mixtures being applied to the transportation infrastructure; and applying a road condition model to generate a simulation of road conditions responsive to maintenance activities and weather conditions experienced in at least a portion of a transportation infrastructure by integrating the weather data, environmental data, roadway characteristics data, and one or more behavioral characteristics of specific treatments applied to the transportation infrastructure in the multiple data processing functions; modulating the road condition model generating the simulation of road conditions responsive to maintenance activities and weather conditions experienced in at least a portion of a transportation infrastructure by applying a maintenance prescription model representative of an agency's standard maintenance treatment in at least one of a rules-based model for a specific weather and treatment situation and a dynamically-determined response based on available maintenance resources to generate a simulated impact of candidate maintenance treatments, the applying and modulating of the road condition model generating simulated road condition and maintenance data; and generating output metrics against which 1) an outcome of a specific winter transportation maintenance infrastructure activity is comparable to evaluate an effectiveness and an efficiency of winter maintenance activities and 2) an outcome of specific maintenance responses are evaluated to enable identification of one or more appropriate maintenance response for each situation requiring maintenance.