Updating and augmenting weather data for pavement mechanistic-empirical design using ASOS/AWOS database in Michigan

Abstract

Climatic files are an important input in the recently released pavement design software Pavement ME Design (PMED). Currently there are 24 climatic files embedded in the PMED for various locations within the state of Michigan, USA. However, the distribution of existing weather stations is not geographically uniform, with noticeable gap regions among these stations. The existing climatic files have only 5 to 9 years of hourly data and have not been updated since 2006. This study aims to add new weather stations to fill the gap regions and to update existing climatic files to the end of the year 2014 using historical climatic data from the Automated Surface/Weather Observation System (ASOS/AWOS). To achieve this goal, the climatic files from other locations in ASOS/AWOS were edited to meet the requirements of the PMED. The new climatic data were compared with existing data in detail to verify the data source consistency. A quantity and quality check was conducted for the new climatic files. Procedures were proposed for filling missing and correcting erroneous data. After thorough quality checks, the filling and correction procedures proposed in this study were shown to be viable for both the flexible and rigid pavement designs in Michigan using PMED. Finally, 15 new weather stations were added for Michigan with the average climatic data length being extended from 7.6 to 15.2 years. The approach and procedures developed in this study can be adopted for the improvement of climatic files in other states or regions.

Keywords:

• Pavement ME Design
• mechanistic-empirical
• climatic data
• ASOS/AWOS
• quantity and quality check
• missing data
• erroneous data

Acknowledgement

The authors appreciate the guidance and involvement of Michael Eacker of MDOT as project manager; Andre Clover as project engineer; and Pat Schafer David Hoeh, Elise Kapphahn, Bob Miller, Justin Schenkel, Wen Kuo, and Curtis Bleech on the MDOT Research Advisory Panel (RAP). The opinions and findings of this study are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of MDOT or FHWA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT).