Automated Record Keeping for Statewide Winter Road Maintenance Using Telematics Tracks
Yaguang Zhang, Aaron C. Ault, James V. Krogmeier · 2024
At the Indiana Department of Transportation, work orders are pivotal for payroll accounting, equipment utilization, and resource allocation in winter road maintenance operations. However, efficient management is hindered by the manual generation of work orders for a vast fleet of over 1000 snow plows and the associated personnel. Existing telematics research often focuses on small-scale short-term scenarios, overlooking the extended analysis required for large fleet management. Challenges in data acquisition and the unique nature of winter road maintenance further complicate the situation. This paper addresses these issues and underscores the urgent need for work order automation in winter road maintenance. It introduces work order verification and generation algorithms for operation information extraction from GPS tracks, with improved details and accuracy compared to current manual processes. The paper also demonstrates two open-source proof-of-concept programs-a Matlab implementation for algorithm development and a user-friendly web app-with real-life state-scale examples, highlighting the tangible benefits of the proposed solution.