A contribution to environmentally friendly winter road maintenance: Optimizing road de-icing

This article deals with the specific road phenomenon in winter, when driving conditions suddenly become significantly worse, although the global weather conditions have not significantly altered. Recognizing and adjusting to such fast changing conditions has been one of the most difficult and demanding tasks for the winter road maintenance services. Nevertheless, it is known that some events can be predicted. The road temperature pattern is studied formally in terms of the road temperature function, thus enabling predictions about the temperature range on different road sections. It is claimed that the road temperature pattern is predictable when only a very small number of carefully chosen measuring spots are taken into account. Furthermore, the methodology of defining temperature measuring locations is described.