Skip to main content

Highways England gets a single view of severe weather information

Highways England has launched a US$6 million (£5 million) integrated weather information system developed by the Civica Group, to enable better management of the nation’s main roads during times of severe weather and to support its aims of keeping the road network free-flowing and safe. Developed by IPL, part of Civica’s digital solutions business, and incorporating Exactrak vehicle navigation and reporting technology, the severe weather information service (SWIS) brings together critical information o
October 25, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
8101 Highways England has launched a US$6 million (£5 million) integrated weather information system developed by the Civica Group, to enable better management of the nation’s main roads during times of severe weather and to support its aims of keeping the road network free-flowing and safe.  

Developed by IPL, part of Civica’s digital solutions business, and incorporating Exactrak vehicle navigation and reporting technology, the severe weather information service (SWIS) brings together critical information on weather forecasts, road treatment plans and winter fleet data into a single system. It will help Highways England and its partners to manage the risk of severe weather more effectively through improved access to dynamic real-time information, together with delivering technology-based efficiencies.

Highways England operates and maintains England’s motorways and major A roads, a network that spans 4,300 miles and carries a third of all traffic by mileage and two thirds of all heavy goods traffic.

Highways England and its partners need access to accurate, robust and timely weather and winter service information to enable them to better manage the resilience of the Strategic Road Network and fulfil their network operator role.

SWIS delivers an enhanced, consolidated view of information to approximately 2,000 operational users actively working to manage and improve the performance of the road network in advance of and during severe weather conditions, including winter service providers, maintainers and control room staff, and external parties. The system supports better planning, execution and recording of winter treatment actions, improved identification of weather events with a potential impact on the road network, and enhanced rectification of weather and winter treatment equipment faults.

The solution enables the monitoring of all activity once a vehicle has left a depot and this data is recorded in SWIS to ensure compliance and to inform future planning.    

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Traffic signal upgrade for UK’s south-east
    April 25, 2016
    A contract to deliver a new central traffic signal control and management system for the UK’s south east has been placed by Highways England with Simulation Systems (SSL) to meet both the immediate and future requirements of Highways England for England’s motorway and major A-roads. Central to the contract will be Siemens Stratos cloud-hosted, fully integrated traffic control and management solution and hosted-SCOOT, the real time UTC and adaptive traffic control system already used to manage and co-ordinat
  • Temporary traffic monitoring with Bluetooth and wi-fi
    May 31, 2013
    David Crawford reviews developments in temporary ITS. Widespread take-up of technologies such as Bluetooth and wi-fi are encouraging the emergence of more sophisticated, while still cost effective, ITS responses to the traffic issues posed by temporary road situations such as work zones and special events. Andy Graham of traffic solutions specialists White Willow Consulting says: “A machine-to-machine radio link is far easier and cheaper than reading characters on a plate.” There can be other plusses. Tech
  • AECOM appointed technical partner for A303 improvements scheme
    April 12, 2017
    Global infrastructure services firm AECOM has secured an eight-year contract with Highways England to work as its technical partner for the major A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down improvements scheme. AECOM, working with its supply chain partners Mace and Mouchel, will deliver a range of multidisciplinary services to support all phases of the project, which will upgrade the eight-mile stretch of the A303 from single to dual carriageway to create a high-quality, reliable route to the south west, improve safet
  • Redflex launches all-in-one traffic enforcement, variable speed detection/enforcement
    February 29, 2016
    Intertraffic Amsterdam 2016 sees the launch of Redflex Traffic Systems’ newest traffic enforcement solution. The company claims the system uses the most advanced image technology the enforcement market has seen to deliver detection rates up to five times higher than competitor products, from within a single housing. Redflex says the system can deliver accurate enforcement of red light; speed; mobile phone use; bus lanes; average speed; close following, ANPR; gridlock and wrong-way driving, to name a few.