This pilot is developed as a pre-trip route planner with rainfall forecast for road users most exposed to weather, such as bicyclists, pedestrians and motor cyclists. This is based on a combination of the rainfall forecasts up to two hours ahead for a 1km by 1km grid in Holland with routes generated by the Demis route planner. The result is that as a road user (cyclist, motorcyclist, pedestrian, etc.) you can better decide when to leave so as to miss the rain that is coming in. The rainfall forecasts have kindly been made available by the KNMI. To see the forecasts look at the Buienradar.nl web site. The Dutch road network data come from the OpenStreetMap project (provided by AND).
Click any picture to the left for the Route Rainfall Prediction Planner for Holland.
The key elements
- Free radar rainfall forecast data from Royal Dutch Weather Service KNMI;
- A proven on-line trip planning system;
- Free road network data http://www.openstreetmap.org/;
- On-line GIS for continuous rider input to enhance this.
Free radar rainfall forecast data
The weather information used in this ROADIDEA pilot concerns rainfall forecast for the Netherlands from the Royal Dutch Weather Service KNMI. The predictions are based on actual radar weather measurements and a predicted wind field. The data is provided as a 1 by 1 km rainfall image every 5 minutes up to two hours ahead. During the ROADIDEA project the data is provided by KNMI for free. Having free weather data is an important ‘must-have’ for this pilot and also for a live service. This was another key ROADIDEA issue.
A proven on-line trip planner
In this ROADIDEA pilot we have used a proven bicycle route trip planner from Demis BV in the Netherlands as the basis of the pilot and have added the ability to provide the trip rainfall forecast. To use the Demis trip planner you need an internet browser with Flash installed.
Free road network data
The (free) Dutch road network data set used came from the OpenStreetMap project (provided by AND, http://www.and.com/) under the Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 2.0 license.
On-line GIS for continuous rider input
A tool called the InterNetter has been under continuous development by Demis BV since 2003 to allow data to be entered and edited over the web as a key part of the data collection stage of the first Dutch Bicycle Trip planner for South Holland and subsequently for the Reorient EU Framework 6 project (http://www.reorient.org.uk/) on railways in the EU. This has subsequently been extended to allow the EU Framework 6 WorldNet project (http://www.worldnetproject.eu/default.aspx) to secure wide ranging input of freight movement data and requires an internet browser with Flash at the user end. Editing of more than simply the vectors is supported; additional attribute information can also be added, as well as link and other aspects of the network parts of the maps.
InterNetter has been highly successful in crowd sourced data collection for the Dutch bicyclist union. They have mobilised hundreds of volunteers, who have already exceeded 4 million edits in operational use to prepare a high quality bicycle route planner for the Netherlands.
To show how the Online-GIS network editor can help user groups to create their own network data we have given this network public access (please enter as username test and as password test). For more information on the background you can download the ROADIDEA slide show on this topic. If you like you can take part in a survey (in Dutch!) on the need for rainfall prediction for on-line routeplanners.
Conclusions and results
Providing real time weather forecast data along a route is highly beneficial for human powered transport. Bad weather is hard to avoid; and rain (let alone snow or ice) is a greater disincentive to taking a particular route or postponing the trip than it would be for a car.
The user feed-back through the ROADIDEA end user survey shows that there is genuine public interest in adding a rainfall prediction service to the existing on-line bicycle trip planning service as long as it stays a free service. This obviously has implications for the business model of the added service.