Orbital Sciences announced Friday that the Southeastern Michigan Snow and Ice Management (SEMSIM) Partners have selected the company¿s ORBTRAC-100 satellite-based automatic vehicle location (AVL) and two-way messaging system to help track and manage a portion of their road maintenance fleets.
Under the $1.1 million contract, the ORBTRAC-100 system will be initially installed on 40 snowplows, with phased installations on the SEMSIM Partners¿ entire 500-vehicle fleet over the next two to three years.
In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, SEMSIM unites the four largest road maintenance agencies in Southeast Michigan in a demonstration project to improve the snow clearance process in Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties and in the city of Detroit.
Other participants include the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) and the University of Michigan.
"The ORBTRAC-100 system will help us better coordinate snow removal activities, increasing the safety and mobility of our residents while reducing the overall costs of winter road maintenance in the Detroit metropolitan area," said Mr. Brent Bair, Managing Director of the Road Commission for Oakland County.
The ORBTRAC-100 system was designed and developed by Orbital¿s Transportation Management Systems (TMS) Division, located in Germantown and Linthicum, Maryland and State College, Pennsylvania.
Using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology, the system will track the location and status of vehicles, dispatching snowplows where they are most needed during major storms and identifying sections of roadways that have been serviced.
It will also capture and store data for post-service analyses to assist in reducing the overall cost of future operations. Additionally, the system will utilize SMART¿s existing communications infrastructure for vehicle-to-dispatch communications.
Mr. David Mathisen, Vice President and General Manager of Orbital¿s TMS Division, said, "We applaud the SEMSIM Partners for exploring new ways to increase the efficiency of their snow removal systems. We look forward to working on this ground-breaking winter maintenance project, a project that firmly establishes Orbital¿s TMS unit as the leader in GPS-based fleet management for the road maintenance industry."
Orbital's Intelligent Transportation Systems
OrbTrac at SpaceDaily
