Investigating the impact of the snow removal process by introducing image processing into interrupted time series analysis

Abstract

In countries with winter seasons, the danger of driving on expressways is significant. Thereby, these countries pour resources into snow removal infrastructure and methods to ensure reliable transportation even when snowfall accumulates. In particular, monitoring the effectiveness of snow removal on expressways is crucial for keeping traffic moving unimpeded. By introducing image analysis into interrupted time series analysis, we provide a novel approach to quantify the impact of snow removal. Experiments on real data in Japan were conducted. The results show that snow removal decreased the visibility level defined by the average luminance values by 70.98%.