More than a million people die every year due to road traffic accidents globally where one in five serious or fatal accidents occurs during severe weather conditions. Sweden is in the lead of Vision Zero, with the aim of zero casualties due to road traffic, and every year new countries and organisations accept the challenge of saving lives. Early studies have shown that one way of decreasing casualties is to implement floating car data (FCD), which is data obtained from connected road vehicles. One example of such an implementation is to gather knowledge about the current state of the road network enabling targeted winter road maintenance. By implementing FCD for winter road maintenance, besides creating safer roads, savings will be made for the environment by reducing the use of fossil fuels and salt.

Since the fleet of road vehicles is going towards being fully autonomous, the volumes of FCD will increase rapidly generating new possibilities for FCD usage. Recent research regarding FCD has mainly focused on traffic flow, speed and route optimisation, together with general methods for FCD mining creating intelligent transport systems. Studies have also been made to cover the gap between road weather information systems (RWIS) monitoring the road condition and thereby improving road weather forecasts. But there is a need for research regarding the implementation of FCD at a level of action, closer to the road users improving winter road maintenance.

Presented in this thesis are results gathered in the project Digital Winter, a project initiated by the Swedish Traffic Administration, where FCD regarding tire-to-road friction has been procured for all public roads in Sweden. Results show promising numbers regarding coverage and reliability for implementation of FCD for winter road maintenance follow-up, managing that assigned levels of road friction are achieved. Examples are given for different areas in Sweden where harsh weather conditions are detected and statistics show coverage of FCD both at a daily and hourly level. Multiple suppliers of FCD have been participating in Digital Winter and the measurements presented, show a correlation between suppliers of FCD and methods that today are approved for winter road maintenance follow-up in Sweden. But also that the friction measured using FCD is closer to the true road friction experienced by road users.