Application of Machine Learning Algorithms for Visibility Classification

Visibility is one of the most important weather impacts on transportation systems. Due to the complexity of weather variables, classification and forecasting techniques for low visibility scenarios remain a challenge and a matter of interest and concern for transportation agencies nationwide. Florida is among the top-rated states with regards to safety issues due to low visibility and has suffered from multiple pileup accidents due to this issue. This paper presents an exploratory study of using machine learning (ML) algorithms to classify visibility conditions in three classes (i.e., low, moderate, and good) based on data obtained from weather stations, specifically in Florida. Five different ML classifiers were developed and spot-checked to determine the best suited for the visibility classification task. The classifiers showed promising results. The highest average accuracy score (89.71%) was achieved by an artificial neural network (ANN). The models were developed using Python.