4DM awarded National Research Council-IRAP support funding to develop a Snow Transport Model.

4DM is interested in building on earlier consulting work that assessed snow drifting using Geospatial information on Ontario provincial highways. The project identified a unique business opportunity to provide solutions, initially as a service focused on identifying snow drifting risk areas and determining appropriate mitigation treatments to reduce snow from reaching the highway. Current software simulation tools contain inadequacies in simulating and quantifying snow drifting. 4DM is proposing to develop and improve internal analytical capabilities by creating a decision support tool related to identifying snow drifting locations and its treatment as service-based tool and eventually a marketable product. The research will focus on improved understanding of the movement of snow over terrain including topography and devising interventions to prevent snow from reaching the highway such as snow fences, hedges/trees etc.

It is anticipated that the availability of advanced snow drift modeling tools will make 4DM highly competitive in the growing international market for snow drift management decision support services. Future evolution of applying this research can expand into real time sensor web integration and application into arid countries dealing with blowing sand.