Webinar 51
Massachusetts Department of Transportation
Snow & Ice Vehicle Inspection Process
February 21, 2024
Summary of the Federal Highway Administration’s Quarterly Webinar
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) promotes geographic information systems (GIS) as a means to manage and improve transportation systems more effectively. One of the ways that FHWA does this is through its GIS in Transportation program,1 which identifies timely and critical GIS issues and topics in transportation and connects transportation agencies with available resources and best practices. The webinar summarized here is part of a quarterly series organized through the GIS in Transportation program.
Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) presented on how GIS tools are used during their Snow and Ice Vehicle Inspection process. MassDOT speakers included Scott Wilson, the Deputy Chief of Operations and Maintenance and Jose Simo, the GIS Outreach Coordinator.
MassDOT utilizes over 3000 vendor pieces of equipment in its Snow and Ice control operations. Over the past 30 years the inspection process for these vehicles has become extremely cumbersome with a lot of duplication of effort. MassDOT had looked at multiple custom solutions to streamline and digitize this effort, but all were costly and time consuming. MassDOT was able to utilize existing configurable GIS (ESRI) applications to create a solution that is configurable by MassDOT staff with little additional cost. The Snow and Ice Management System (SIMS) is used to keep track of all snow and ice activities, including who is deployed, what was accomplished in the field, road conditions every few hours during a snow or ice event, and how much salt was used.
During the webinar, the speakers demonstrated the use of Survey123 to fill out forms required as part of the inspection process. The transition from paper forms to using Survey123 has been beneficial due to the app’s seamless GUI, built in drop-down menus, and easy data collection exported in spreadsheet format. Additionally, on the back end, the MassDOT team can filter the surveys based on date ranges or areas in which inspections are performed. Survey123 is easily accessible by both MassDOT users and equipment vendors and encourages the form users to fill out forms more completely and accurately.
Resources discussed in the webinar include:
A recording of the webinar is available. Please use passcode 4.ZB2.bG to access it.
Questions & Answers
Were there any privacy concerns or considerations about the locations of the users when collecting data via the Survey123 form?
This issue did not come up. Most of the devices being used are state owned devices are state owned devices, so that is not an issue. Also, most vendors have also signed GPS agreements.
Are most inspections performed at the depot?
There is a vendor agreement that states all the inspections are done at a depot unless they have more than five pieces of equipment. In that case it’s easier for MassDOT to go to the vendor.
Are the people doing the inspections MassDOT employees?
All are MassDOT employees and mostly use MassDOT devices.
Does this system interact with other systems such as 511/emergency operations?
Information is provided to 511. At every depot, every two hours they report on what the road conditions are, what operations they are performing, and what the weather conditions are. We do not show plow GPS locations.
Do these operations change significantly if there is an ice storm?
They do change how they deploy vehicles in an ice storm vs a show storm. Operations change. They have friction monitors on the supervisor’s vehicles to determine how much salt to put out.
The app was developed to particularly help with the inspection process. Did it help speed up inspection?
The application made the inspection go a lot faster. The application form is now arranged how one would actually do the inspection.
Was there formal training provided on how to use the application?
They did a couple of presentations. There is also step-by-step setup instruction guides for the users.
Was the application created in-house?
Yes, it was developed in-house. We were already familiar with and using ESRI products.
How was the decision made to create the application?
There was a three-year plan. The third year was to update SIMS to do the inspections, but the plan was too expensive. Then it was decided to try Survey 123, which they already owned, so they did it in-house.
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