Iowa Roadway Surface Condition Data from RWIS Network

Live surface and pavement condition data is collected every 10 minutes from Roadway Weather Information System (RWIS) sensors across Iowa. The State of Iowa provides this data, which excludes invalid sensor readings marked as NA or 9999. The dataset was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Predict road icing risk from surface temperature and other sensor metrics using time-series forecasting.
• Analyze correlations between pavement conditions and weather variables like air temperature and humidity.
• Develop real-time dashboards for winter road maintenance crews using live sensor status and condition fields.
• Train models to flag sensor malfunctions by identifying patterns of invalid 9999 or NA values in the data stream.

Strengths

• Data is updated at a high frequency of every 10 minutes, enabling near real-time analysis.
• Invalid sensor readings (NA or 9999) are explicitly flagged and excluded, improving data reliability for the service.

Limitations

• The specific number of sensor sites, rows of data, and available columns are unknown, limiting reproducibility.
• The geographic scope is limited to the state of Iowa, which may not be representative of other regions.

Provenance

Source

State of Iowa

Collection Method

Collected from Roadway Weather Information System (RWIS) sensor sites.

Time Range

Ongoing, with data from at least April 2026.

Freshness

Updated every 10 minutes.

Geography

Iowa, USA.