Environmental Parameters for Infrastructure Modeling: Updating Existing Data on Spatial Distribution of the Climatic Conditions in the Continental USA

摘要

Climatic conditions can have severe impacts on the existing condition and long term durability oftransportation infrastructure in a given region. As such, in infrastructure management studies,climatic conditions variables often play a major role. However, the most recently availablewinter climate condition indices on a national level was developed over 50 years ago, as such, anupdate on cold weather climate data, such as freezing index and freeze-thaw cycle, is needed.This paper updates these key climate variables using climatic data collected between 1971 and2000. This paper presents freeze index and freeze-thaw cycle values in the form of contour maps,and a significant change in these climate values was observed since the late 1950’s. This paperalso explores the possibility of developing new climatic regions on the basis of combined, or asubset of, freeze index, freeze-thaw cycle, precipitation, and temperature. It is expected that theupdated freeze indices and freeze-thaw cycle value will facilitate a more reliable assessment ofclimatic conditions and ultimately on their effect on transportation infrastructure.