COST 323 action
"Weigh-in-Motion of Road Vehicles"

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COST 323 is one of the actions supported by the COST Transport part of the European Commission's Transport Directorate, DG VII. Following a proposal of the FEHRL group (Forum of European Highway Research Laboratories), COST323 was initiated in 1992. Since 1993 it has been run by the Management Committee, a group of scientific and technical experts, to promote the development and implementation of weigh-in-motion techniques and their applications, and to facilitate an exchange of experiences between different European countries.

The main objectives of the COST 323 action are:

  1. Inventory of WIM requirements in Europe
  2. Collection and evaluation of existing WIM information
  3. Preliminary work on the development of a European technical specification on WIM
  4. Agreement of mechanisms and protocols for a pan-European database of WIM sites and data
  5. Collection and dissemination of scientific and technical information
  6. Exchange of experiences and conclusions from other international projects.

In 1998, 19 countries are taking part in the action: Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech republic, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. Eighteen of these countries have signed the Memorandum of Understanding.

Following a proposal to the COST Transport committee and the approval of the Committee of Senior Officials, the action, which was initially approved for the period from July 1993 to July 1996, has been prolonged by the end of the 1998.

From July 1993 to the end of 1995, the following actions have been completed:

  • report on the inventory of requirements for weigh-in-motion,
  • achievement of results from the first European test of WIM systems and sensors (4 systems and 4 sensors), which was organised in the period from 1993 to 1995 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland,
  • multilingual glossary (10 languages) of weigh-in-motion terms and definitions which may form part of a future specification,
  • database of European weigh-in-motion sites with more than 350 entries,
  • organisation of the First European Weigh-in-Motion of Road Vehicles conference (Zürich, 8-10 March, 1995), with publication of pre- and post-proceedings,
  • co-ordination with the OECD DIVINE project.

COST 323 activities were presented in a stand at the COST-Interaction conference in Basel (October 1995) and with a paper at the NATDAC'94 conference in the United States (Rocky Hill, Connecticut, September 1994).

Short Term Scientific Missions (STSM) are organised between members to fulfil some of the objectives of the action; it provides the opportunity for experts and PhD students to carry some experiments and studies abroad, and for the organisations to closer collaborate.

In the period 1996-98, the work will emphasise the following:

  • updates of the requirements of WIM in Europe, with integration of the requirements of newly participating countries
  • realisation of complementary WIM test programs (in a cold climate and on a motorway with heavy traffic)
  • development of the WIM site database by incorporating basic statistical information,
  • organisation of a second European WIM conference to present the final results of the action.

Bernard Jacob, LCPC, Paris, chairman of the COST 323

Last updated on 20th of June, 1997, by A.Znidaric