By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times
Dr. Philippe Tissot (right) and his team give a demonstration on the Weather on Wheels app.
Whitney Rutledge of Houston makes the four-hour drive to visit family several times each month.
She knows exactly what time she should leave town to arrive right before rush hour.
But she knows bad weather is a game changer.
Rutledge once had to drive through a severe storm near Refugio, which forced her to make a few stops.
However, since about a year ago, Rutledge's trips to Houston are no longer affected by the weather. She uses Weather on Wheels, an app created by the Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, which displays weather forecasts along an entire route.
"I use it every time I travel anywhere now," Rutledge, who is a research assistant at the university, said. "The one time I didn't use the app I hit a downpour and I knew I should have checked the app."
Philippe Tissot, associated director of the surveying institute, said he presented the app idea to Geographic Information Systems and Computer Science students about five years ago. Tissot said the purpose of the app is to improve safety during a road trip.
Tissot said students researched how bad weather affects the rate of traffic accidents and found that there are about 1 million traffic accidents, including fatalities, every year due to weather, according to the Department of Transportation.
"This project is a great experience for the students," Tissot said. "They are part of the decision-making process. They have to look for a solution; they discuss the project in a group and then they make it happen," he said.
Weather on Wheels is a free app, and it is available to download for web, iPhone and Android. It allows people to enter their current location, destination, and choose the date and time of travel. The app then offers routes to choose between and then displays the weather forecast along the chosen route.
Students who helped develop and test the app include Rutledge, Julien Clifford, Darius Stephen, Bradley Koskowich, Carly Stanton and Andrew Frost. The Innovation Center team includes incubator manager David Fonseca, program coordinator Chau Hoang, and research assistants Steven Tran, Selvy Letlora, Laura Pulgarin, Alyssa Garza and Tina Lentz.
"These type of opportunities pushes the students' creativity at a young age," Tissot said. "Developing these skills now is going to be very good for their careers later on."
Institute researcher Jonathan Scott Duff said he wished this type of technology would have been available during a time in the '90s when he had to evacuate town with his family.
"We evacuated for a hurricane and had Weather on Wheels existed back then, we would have been able to see how windy or how rainy it was on the road," Duff said. "If Weather on Wheels would have been around we could have checked before making travel decisions."
LEARN MORE
Weather on Wheels is available online at weatheronwheels.com
To download the app from the App Store for iPhone go to itunes.apple.com/us/app/weather-on-wheels or from the Google Play Store for Android at play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cbiapps.weatheronwheels.
