Algorithms for compression and real-time internet services of intelligent road data

Abstract

The road weather station (RWS) network in the Northern parts of Finland is too sparse for the purposes of delivering detailed information of the road weather. Therefore, the Interreg Nord funded Winter Road Maintenance (WiRMa) project researches the possibility of using large goods vehicles (LGV) as mobile RWSs by equipping them with sensors measuring a number of variables directly on the road.

The collected sensor data is stored in a cloud storage and delivered to road maintenance personnel through a web based user interface (UI) as well as varied research purposes for road weather predictions through application programming interface (API). This article describes the technical points in compressing the collected measurement data. Both the currently implemented algorithm and thoughts on future development are shared.

WiRMa project is implemented in years 2016-2019. The lead partner is Lapland University of Applied Sciences Ltd. The co-beneficiaries are Luleå University of Technology, Arctic University of Norway, Foreca Ltd., Finnish Meteorological Institute, and Casselgren Innovation AB.