Ontario project to develop winter road WISDOM

by Today's Trucking

TORONTO, Ont. – IBI Group and Weather Telematics are joining together to develop a high-tech system that will help to better respond to winter road conditions.

Known as the Winter Ice and Snow Decision Support System for Operations Management (WISDOM) platform, the tool is being developed with support from Ontario Centres of Excellence. Two unnamed Ontario counties will pilot the platform during the winter of 2020/21.

An Ontario partnership wants to leverage data to better respond to winter road conditions. ( Photo: Jim Park)

Real-time traffic and AI-predicted road conditions will be used to route and deploy equipment, while procedures and vehicle routes will be automated. Sensors on individual vehicles will also collect road data at the ground level, improving accuracy and adjusting responses accordingly.

North American jurisdictions spent about $2 billion on winter operations in 2018, and the two businesses say that the costs of clearing snow are expected to increase each year because of population growth and more extreme weather events.

“Surprisingly, most governments rely on basic solutions to manage their winter maintenance and cleaning processes,” said Michael Lende, president and CEO of the Internet of Things Inc. “WISDOM has the potential of dramatically improving the ability to manage government resources, significantly lower costs, and improve driver safety.”

Weather Telematics is a subsidiary of Internet of Things Inc.

IBI Group global director of intelligence Derek Sims says the platform promises to help manage road clearing operations and reduce the use of de-icing materials without sacrificing safety.

“This project is exactly the type of partnership we are seeking to foster through our Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) WinterTech Development Program,” said Vic Fedeli, Ontario minister of economic development, job creation and trade.


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  • Well I don’t see anything working as long as the Ontario government keeps letting young drivers on Hwys in winter unless they have run a few with experienced drivers can’t put two guys in a truck and send across country with no winter experience even in summer but all I have seen is new drivers get into a predicament and they pannic to make things worse how can insurance company’s allow one or two drivers run together as a team and haven’t driven a winter easpeally Northern Ontario North Western Ontario with curves hills and total darkness nothing will change until government makes maditory changes for new drivers my brother died for this very reason a driver lost control on a corner going to fast for icy road not knowing road skies across his corner then completely panics cuts it across 3 lanes right into my brother’s lane in a passing lane my brother died because someone that was driving shouldn’t have been he drove for over 25 years and gets killed by a guy that hadn’t even driven a winter crazy something has to change my poor brother whatched his death coming right at him and he had nowhere to go if you have an Az licence your suppose to be a professional driver not panick all the driver had to do was cut over a bit he had almost 3 wide-open lanes it just kills me my bro died so violently love you Ken miss you so much bro by for now