Weather for the Road: a Mobile Solution Philippe Tissot & Darius Stephen Conrad Blucher Institute David Fonseca, Hoang Chau, Duc Tran, Laura Pulgarin & Selvy Letlora The Innovation Center Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Presentation at the January 2015 AMS Annual Conference The Last Mile: Methods and Technologies for Delivering Custom Weather, Water, and Climate Information to Everyone in the World 13 th Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 31 st Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies & Special Symposium on Model Postprocessing and Downscaling
Outline Motivation/Project Start The app development process Deployment Other similar apps/websites Future Plan Advice? 2
Motivation/Project Start Weather-Related Crash Statistics (Annual Averages) wet pavement, rain, snow/sleet, icy pavement, snow/slushy pavement, fog, cross winds 10-year Average (2002-2012) 10-year Percentages 1,311,970 crashes 23% of vehicle crashes 480,338 persons injured 20% of crash injuries 6,253 persons killed 17% of crash fatalities Statistics from the US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration From Ship Navigation to Highways From a ship channel navigation app (Transit Time) to a highway weather forecast app 3
A large amount of data is available and underutilized including weather predictions Challenge: how to take advantage of this data and make road trips safer
How does it work? Google Route Info Enter Trip Information NDFD Weather Data <ns3591:ndfdgen xmlns:ns3591="uri:dwmlgen"> <latitude xsi:type="xsd:string">38.99</latitude> <longitude xsi:type="xsd:string">-77.01</longitude> <product xsi:type="xsd:string">time-series</product> <starttime xsi:type="xsd:string">2004-01- 01T00:00:00</startTime> <endtime xsi:type="xsd:string">2012-02-12t00:00:00</endtime> <Unit xsi:type="xsd:string">e</unit> <weatherparameters> 5
Technologies & Data Data Google Maps API, including routing National Weather Service NDFD: XML web service Weather predictions obtained using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) request for locations along the route Technologies Web app built using standard web development technologies, i.e. Javascript, CSS, HTML and jquery mobile Phonegap to wrap the apps, i.e. translation into native mobile apps. Presently for Android devices. Windows, ios upcoming. Allows platform agnostic development. 6
Enter Destination Enter Date & Start Time 7
Examples Corpus Christi New York: December 24th 8
Weather Conditions Examples of selected forecasted weather conditions Icons presently selected for locations based on <weatherconditions> attribute weather-summary and intensity Weather Icons by Weer 9
Team Undergraduate Research Assistants from the GIS and Computer Science programs at the Conrad Blucher Institute Graduate assistants from the Business and Arts and Graphics programs at the Innovation Center Joint work included a 1 semester pre-incubation course for technical team, joint grant and regular meetings Other assistance and advices provided by the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi commercialization office and the TAMU System Commercialization Office 10
Launch Local media (TV, newspaper) Social media (Facebook, Twitter) Posts and tweets related to weather on the road Paid advertising Facebook posts boosts (allow very selective impressions) Google Adwords (linked to search) Twitter (linked to #hashtag) Presently ~ 500 users (350 web/150 app) 17 states 11
Other Similar Apps/Services AccuWeather.com The Weather Channel Apps like Weather Tripper, Weather Route, Weather Way, RouteCast Similar in purpose, but not equivalent features 12
What s Next? Developing Version 2: fixing bugs and adding features based on user feedback Continue to gather feedback on how to best present/access weather for the road information Add weather alerts for selected road conditions, other information Grow user base Consider long term operation options 13
THANK YOU QUESTIONS? - ADVICE Access: weatheronwheelshome.com Acknowledgements: Funding from the Texas Research Development Fund is gratefully acknowledged