Showcase 2025: Using AI to Monitor Road Surface Conditions
By Mike Nolan
ALBANY, N.Y. (April 8, 2025)—University at Albany doctoral student Carly Sutter never envisioned her background in mathematics would lead to helping New Yorkers become more resilient to severe weather events.
Then she met Kara Sulia, director of UAlbany’s xCITE lab, a software development and data visualization facility within the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC). The xCITE lab specializes in connecting weather research with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and machine learning.
Sutter’s interest in weather, along with her two math degrees and work experience made her a unique fit for the lab.
“During the pandemic, I started to reevaluate my career path,” said Sutter, who was working as an actuary in New York City at the time. “I’ve always been fascinated by the weather and decided it was the right time to consider returning to school for atmospheric science.”
“Kara saw my application for UAlbany’s Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences PhD program and told me about all the cool things happening inside the xCITE lab. It was a perfect match.”
Real Time Road Conditions
Now a graduate research assistant, Sutter has spent the last four years working closely with Sulia, Nick Bassill, director of UAlbany’s New York State Weather Risk Communication Center, and ASRC Director Chris Throncroft, to develop a new tool that utilizes machine learning models to improve situational awareness of road surface conditions across New York.
The tool is being created in collaboration with the New York State Department of Transportation and funded by the National Science Foundation’s Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography, of which UAlbany is a partner.
“Winter weather often leads to hazardous conditions, requiring transportation agencies to actively monitor conditions, plan and mitigate the impacts to roadways through methods like salting and plowing,” Sutter said. “Our team is using machine learning to automatically detect and forecast weather-related road surface conditions based on roadside camera images and weather data.”
The DOT has more than 2,000 roadside cameras across the state that are publicly available through 511NY.
Sutter, along with the xCITE lab team, is collecting thousands of images from those cameras to program their tool to recognize conditions such as severe snow, wet roads and poor visibility. Once operational, transportation agencies can be alerted to problem areas in real time through a customizable dashboard.
Sutter says the idea is to automate the process of monitoring road conditions, which is mostly now done manually.
“We’ve archived thousands of DOT snapshots that are helping to teach the tool how to identify different road conditions,” said Sutter. “Right now, you have transportation officials driving on the roads and reporting back on conditions, along with others who are checking the roadside camera images manually. Our tool has the potential to greatly improve this process and traveler safety.”
Featured at Showcase
Sutter’s research will be on display on Wednesday, April 30, for UAlbany Showcase day, which brings together the entire University community to highlight the academic excellence of students through their research, scholarship, creative activities and experiential learning.
“I’ll be showing the full project from start to finish, including visual examples from the dashboard we’ve created that can be used to monitor current road surface conditions and forecasts of what they might look like in the near future,” Sutter said. “I’m proud of our work and excited to share it with our campus community.”
“Carly has achieved what many other researchers still struggle with, and that is establishing and mastering multidisciplinary assignments through collaboration with researchers or stakeholders in other fields,” added Sulia. “I am continuously impressed with Carly’s initiative. She has been instrumental in the early and continued success of this project, and I look forward to seeing her work on display.”
Showcase will be held across the Uptown Campus, including the Lecture Center Concourse, Campus Center, University Art Museum, University Libraries, Performing Arts Center, ETEC and Broadview Center. Students, faculty and staff, as well as prospective students, donors, sponsors, legislators, community leaders, school groups, institutional partners and other visitors are all invited to attend.