• International Journal of Highway Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.9-18
• /
• 2017

PURPOSES : This study evaluates the reasonableness of the recommended amount of deicing chemicals based on historical data for snow removal. The result can be used to aid decision-making for the reservation of cost-effective de-icing chemicals. METHODS : First, the recommended amount of de-icing chemical to use and historical usage data were evaluated to identify specific usage characteristics for each region. Road maintenance length and snow-removal working days were analyzed over the past five winter seasons. Next, differences in the recommended amount of chemical to use and actual use were compared using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Last, the two types of data were analyzed using a chi-square test to verify if the two distributions of variation pattern are statistically significant. We found that there are significant differences between the data from each region during the past five winter seasons. RESULTS : The results showed that the equation for calculating the amount of de-icing chemical to use appears to be revised. CONCLUSIONS : The results imply that the equation for calculating the amount of de-icing chemical to apply as a national standard is very important when the public agency makes decisions related to snow-removal.