Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Roads--Snow and ice control--Iowa--Black Hawk County; Snow removal--Iowa--Black Hawk County; Roads--Snow and ice control; Snow removal; Iowa--Black Hawk County; Academic theses;
Abstract
Providing speedy and cost-effective snow removal management during winter months proves to be an overwhelming task for the local and government personnel. Considering the importance and the massive costs involved in snow removal operations, it is essential that the snowplowing operations be carefully and efficiently planned, so as to minimize the costs and provide a quick response. However, the existing methods for snowplowing planning operations are mostly handled manually. For example, the resource allocation and management is done manually without using any analytical tool for optimization, and the routing is done often times without considering the least costly route to reach the route to snowplow. While the manual methods often result in nonoptimal resource allocation, increased deadhead time, and inefficient routing, the standalone systems lacks advanced mapping capabilities and decision-support, and are often difficult to use for a novice computer user. Integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Web technologies with expert systems can provide valuable real-time spatial decision support many problem solving environments including snow removal operations planning. Therefore, there is a significant need for the development of an intelligent spatial decision support system (ISDSS) that helps plan the snow removal operations efficiently, while being user friendly. This research presents the development of a Web-based Intelligent Spatial Decision Support System for Planning Snow Removal Operations (WISPRO) that integrates an intelligent software component ( expert system) with geo-spatial and analytical techniques for providing real-time decision support for planning snow removal operations. The system is developed using ESRI ArcIMS ActiveX Connector, ArcIMS Route Server Extension and related web technologies like ASP, JavaScript, HTML, XML, and RSS. The ArcIMS ActiveX Connector was customized to provide mapping and analytical tools for several tasks related to snow removal such as routing, resource allocation, and inventory analysis. The user interface components such as the toolbars, layers and the map itself were adapted to emulate the look-and-feel of standardized GIS software like ArcGIS. Expert knowledge was gathered from the personnel in charge of snow removal operations in the cities of Cedar Falls, IA and Waterloo, IA and the personnel from Iowa DOT, and is then encoded as "Business Rules" using Visual Rule Studio, and is integrated with the system. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology using XML weather feeds was used to read live and forecast weather to help make real-time decisions based on Weather conditions. The ArcIMS route server extension was configured and customized to provide efficient routing between the snowplowing station and the snowplow route. The system has several capabilities such as user-friendly interface, powerful analytical tools for effective management and optimal allocation of resources (like material, vehicles, and drivers), efficient routing, easy inventory management and analysis, integrated real-time weather system, and expert knowledge. This system is capable of streamlining various tasks involved in planning snow removal operations and helps cut costs by increasing the efficiency of snow removal procedures. Future improvements for this research include utilizing ArcGIS Server 9 and ArcObjects for realizing advanced analysis capabilities utilizing individual road segment weather information, adding a software agent to manage resources along with weather conditions.
Year of Submission
2005
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Department of Computer Science
First Advisor
Eugene Wallingford
Second Advisor
Ramanthan Sugumaran
Third Advisor
Kevin C. O'Kane
Date Original
2005
Object Description
1 PDF file (142 leaves)
Copyright
©2005 Shriram Ilavajhala
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Ilavajhala, Shriram, "A Web-Based Intelligent Spatial Decision Support System for Planning Snow Removal Operations" (2005). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 3015.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/3015
Comments
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