Winters are perhaps the most pleasant seasons of all seasons. However, when the roads get
blocked by thick layers of ice, then you can’t say the same thing. Every year thick deposits of ice
cover up the highways in the UK. To tackle this problem, the UK councils had ordered around
1.3 million tonnes of salt before the beginning of the winters in 2017. This amount has almost
doubled than the orders of 2016.
Mayfl ower Smart Control is a smart company that facilitates solutions for exterior light-
ing and associated illuminated equipment. The Amey and Hampshire County Council has
been approached by the company to debate about the use of smart technology and minimize
the excessive use of gritting of roads during the winters. They have deployed the project in
various locations with their fi rst priority being the Winchester area (Hampshire, UK). May-
fl ower Smart Control has used a smart sensor platform in the pioneering project that will
help the highway maintenance team to take a crucial gritting decision based on the weather
conditions.
Weather Station to help in the Decision Making
Every decision associated with the gritting process is usually based on the weather forecasts
provided by numerous sources like Met O ce. However, this weather forecast depends on a
large geographic area which could provide inaccurate readings. The main problem is that the
temperature of the road surfaces may vary as much as 15°C. This could result in a day and night
di erence in the readings.
The installed wireless sensors by Mayfl ower Smart Control e ectively monitor the road
surface temperatures and especially the weather on the gritting routes. This naturally helps the
gritting service teams to make better-informed decisions based on accurate data. The reading
devices have been installed to the street light poles that utilize Mayfl ower Smart Control street
lighting network to communicate to the main database for analysis of the readings. Theinstalled
sensors are capable of measuring atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, pluviometer,
anemometer, and wind vane.
Mayfl ower Smart Control is mainly based on the Zigbee communication platform. The
information collected from the smart sensors is sent via ZigBee to Mayfl ower Gateway. Then,
data present on the gateway is sent to the cloud services by using 2G or 3G technology to get
visualized in the Sentilo Platform which is based on the Amazon Web Services. This gathered
information is very useful to take real-time decisions and also for the weather forecast and to
tell about the conditions of the road to the public.
Saving Money and Improving the Environment
The main aim of the project was to show instant operational advantage and savings. Now the
authorities are capable of making a decision in margination situations. Amey of Hampshire
CASE STUDY 1
MONITORING SNOW AND ICE IN UK
HIGHWAYS DURING WINTERS
132 Internet of Things
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