In cold and snowy regions, road traffic is prone to hindrance from snowstorm-induced poor visibility and snowdrifts. To mitigate these hindrances, snow fences have been installed along roads. In recent years, roads have often been constructed on high embankments, as is often seen on high-standard national highways. For roads on high embankments, collector snow fences are installed on the slopes of embankments to mitigate poor visibility from blowing snow and to secure the effective road width. In such cases, the top of the snow fence does not extend much above the road surface, which gives the fence less ability to mitigate poor visibility than for collector snow fences installed on roads without embankments. We has developed an advanced snow fence, whose performance on roads on embankments is superior to that of conventional snow collector fences. Advanced snow fences are 7 m in height. To reduce the wind pressure acting on the fence, the metal slats in the upper section are highly porous. The top third consists of mesh panel with 80 % porosity, the middle third consists of perforated slats with 30 % porosity, and the bottom third consists of non-perforated slats with 0 % porosity. The fences have proven superior to conventional snow fences in improving visibility under oblique winds.

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In the present study,the author attempted to establish the forecast model of the road surface temperatures and the road surface freezing after three hours which would enable anti-icing work before the road surface freezes using a neural network.The results of the present study revealed that the road surface temperatures and the road surface freezing in three hours can be predicted with considerable precision.

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