Kentucky transportation officials found themselves in a tough spot after back-to-back extreme winters. Average winter costs almost doubled when unforeseen storms hit. They needed better insight into fleet management and the ability to deploy resources more quickly.

Toward that end, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet developed a system that uses real-time and crowdsourced data about road conditions to give crews the insight they need to respond to situations more quickly. To build what it calls its Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), the agency first partnered with the makers of the crowdsourced traffic app Waze, which lets drivers report what they’re seeing on the roads in real time. Next, it enlisted mapping software vendor Esri to incorporate the real-time data into existing GIS applications. The beta system added data from official state weather stations and traffic sensors, as well as information about the location and status of snowplows.

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