There has been innovation in every aspect of how individuals prepare for major snow storms – everything from funky new snow removal devices to new ways of pre-treating road surfaces for anti-icing before the onset of a major storm. Now, the real promise is in taking some of Silicon Valley’s hottest technologies — the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, renewable energy and autonomous vehicles — and using them to improve the way cities respond to blockbuster snow events such as the Blizzard of 2015:
1. Interactive snow plow tracking (Internet of things)
In response to the question on everyone’s mind during a major storm – “When am I getting plowed?” – New York City created an interactive snow plow-tracking map (PlowNYC) that lets everyone in the five boroughs know exactly when they can expect to be plowed. PlowNYC, which was launched by the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecom (DoITT), works by attaching mobile GPS sensors to plows, trucks and salting equipment, which then relay their information back to New York City’s Department of Sanitation, which records all snow vehicle activity. Just type in your city street address on the PlowNYC map and check out the corresponding color: green means your street has been plowed less than an hour ago, blue means 1-3 hours ago, yellow means 3-6 hours ago, orange means 6-12 hours ago and purple means 12-24 hours ago.
And it’s not just New York City that has experimented with the Internet of Things to make snow removal more efficient (or at least more transparent) — three other cities (Boston, Buffalo and Minneapolis) have also hooked up GPS sensors to enable machine-to-machine communication. In Buffalo, for example, citizens can call the Division of Citizen Services to request a city block to be plowed. Then, that information is relayed to GPS-equipped snowplows, which communicate back when the block has indeed been plowed. To close the loop, the citizen making the request gets a nice e-mail notification from the city.
2. The perfect snow removal algorithm (artificial intelligence)
If you thought artificial intelligence was only being applied to activities such as playing the perfect game of chess or winning at Jeopardy!, well, there’s another innovative use for AI – creating computer algorithms to optimize the snow removal process. Computers can decide when to treat the roads, when to plow, and how to optimize the routes for a city’s limited number of snow removal machines. The goal of these algorithms is to minimize travel distance, avoid U-turns, and reach higher-priority roads before lower-priority roads. If it’s done right, it can save a municipality up to 40 percent in snow plowing time.
This may sound routine for cities used to major snowfalls, but creating the perfect snow removal algorithm is something that is known in the AI world as an NP-Hard problem. To solve this problem, a computer must take satellite mapping data, transform it into a network graph, augment that graph with other data, such as road-priority data, and then plot an optimized route through a number of nodes. The algorithm must balance a city’s need to keep high-priority roads cleared with ensuring every street gets cleared. If you think developing a snow removal algorithm for your driveway or a snow removal algorithm for an airport is hard, try multiplying it in complexity for a vast urban metropolis with many different neighborhoods and a limited number of resources.
3. Connecting strangers in need during winter storms (crowdsourcing)
During major storms, social media and social networking sites can play an important role in connecting people, whether it’s helping to track down abandoned cars, find stranded motorists, or locate a warm place to take refuge from the storm. People are not just posting snowfall totals in certain neighborhoods and posting photos with their friends, they are also taking advantage of the power of the crowd to find complete strangers who can provide much-needed help during a storm.
For example, during the Atlanta snow storm of 2014, the SnowedOutAtlanta Facebook group was set up to help people find strangers who could help out stranded motorists. People with smartphones running out of power could also use a link to post the location of their last smartphone use before their signal went out, in hopes of someone finding them during a storm. People posted photos lost pets or stories of local residents. At its peak, the group had 55,000 members, with 300 people joining every 15 minutes.
4. Self-driving snow plows (autonomous vehicles)
Autonomous vehicles now include more than just cars. For the past five years, the Institute of Navigation has been hosting the Autonomous Snow Plow Competition in Minnesota to encourage students and members of the public at large to come up with the perfect self-driving snow removal machine. Participants are given a route, and their machines must be able to clear that route of snow without any remote control guidance.
In this year’s competition, the highest-scoring vehicle was the Zenith 2.0 from the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Other entrants that scored high included the THUNDAR and the SNOWMENATOR (both from North Dakota State University). While the self-driving snowplow is still an innovation in the beginning stages, one day a personal self-driving snow plow could be a nice-to-have during a major storm. You would theoretically be able to watch your residence being plowed by a snowbot from your window, all while sipping a hot chocolate.
5. Solar-powered, snow-free pavements (renewable energy)
Things may not be as rosy in Scandinavia as people think, but one thing is certain: Scandinavians know how to deal with snow. In cities such as Oslo and Helsinki, heated sidewalks and pavements have the ability to melt snow. Other cities, eager to avoid the hassle and expense of clearing urban streets of snow, are looking into a mix of solar power and geothermal power solutions as a way of heating streets during heavy snowfalls. One solution calls for super-strong glass to replace asphalt or concrete for solar-powered roadways.
These solutions, while similar in concept to the heated driveway for well-heeled suburban residents, differ dramatically in that they rely on renewable energy and are meant to be environmentally sustainable. One recent experiment in the Netherlands shows what’s possible when the concept is rolled out on a wide scale: the Dutch province of Utrecht hopes to create passively heated bike lanes for the city’s biking enthusiasts during the winter. Heat that had been collected and stored during warmer summer months would be circulated via pipes below the surface to warm bike paths during snowy weather.