The Texas Department of Transportation recently incorporated floodplain data and information directly from its boots-on-the-ground workforce to give travelers a more detailed picture regarding flooded and closed roads, detours, and roadway construction zones via a new mobile application that operates in tandem with the www.DriveTexas.org website.
[Above image by TxDOT]
The agency noted that this not just another “navigation app” for motorists. It uses reports from TxDOT employees who are filling potholes, closing roads or travel lanes, erecting detour routes, and monitoring weather-related road impacts to help travelers better plan their trip. Those workers input that data into TxDOT Highway Condition Reporting System, or HCRS, and from there, the information moves to the website and the app and shows up as an appropriate icon on a map.
The app also links to all 3,700 TxDOT traffic cameras, giving users access to live video feeds that show traffic conditions, the agency said.
In addition to the data directly provided by TxDOT work crews, more detailed flood information is flowing to the app via a statewide network of local sensors that continuously monitor accumulated rainfall. The sensors, maintained by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, cover about 40 percent of the state, with more sensors coming online, noted Aaron Branson, a special projects coordinator for TxDOT.
“As it’s raining, you’ll see a little polygon on the app that looks like a blob on the map that says flooding likely in this whole area,” added Sarah Berryhill, TxDOT project manager. “And as it rains more, that flood blob will grow. As the rain stops, you’ll see your flood blobs start to shrink back. So, it’s real time. It’s a neat feature.”
The project started with the DriveTexas website, which launched in 2012, said Branson – a website designed to provide real-time data on crashes, closures, construction work, plus damaged or flooded roadways across the Lone Star state.
As the site’s following increased, “we noticed that, more and more, users viewed the information on a mobile device,” he said. “So, we thought it would be great if we could bring this to an actual native application that’s more user-friendly, in a mobile app.”
Most of that work involved making interface decisions that ultimately would impact the user experience. The back-end work – the actual data input work that supplies content to the app – was already happening, he explained.
When TxDOT launched the new app in July, it started out averaging about 2,200 users a day – nothing record-breaking, but a decent start for a new app. But in mid-July, usage spiked to nearly 80,000 users a day as heavy rains in Southwestern and South-Central Texas caused several days of severe flooding, said Laura Butterbrodt, TxDOT media relations information specialist – and the number of users kept right on climbing.
“In the few short months that it’s been out in the wild, we’ve seen about a 50 percent increase in month-to-month growth,” Butterbrodt said, noting that – so far this year – the website and app have received more than four million visits.
Most of the usage spikes happen during severe weather events, Branson explained. “If it’s a 100-degree day in the middle of August, we don’t have a lot of activity,” he said. “But if there’s a severe weather event, whether it’s a flood, snow, ice, anything like that, we get a spike in usage on both the app and the actual website. So, it is very much a kind of emergency response tool, a road condition tool during emergency weather.”
If a traveler is in a major metropolitan area in Texas, they also have access to the Highway Emergency Response Operator, or HERO, system, via the app; a roadside assistance program that can help with a flat tire, gasoline, a jump start or redirecting traffic in a minor crash, Branson noted. In the future, TxDOT hopes to add a weather radar tool and a way to provide real-time weather watches and warnings to the site and app, he said.
“It’s a really great tool,” Berryhill added. “The value behind it is really having those boots on the ground enter that information. It’s right from the source.”
Innovation
