--- title: "Transport, explained | Nexus Observatory" description: "Interactive explainer: transport and logistics in 3D, chapter by chapter: frost forms when the deck is below the dew point…" url: https://observatory.global/industries/transport/explainer/ publisher: Nexus Observatory Inc. updated: 2026-11-02 --- Overview Drag or use the arrow keys to turn Transport · Sector explainer Explainer # Weather where the traffic is. Ice on a bridge deck, crosswind on a short runway, swell at the harbour mouth, a dead zone on a mountain highway. Each chapter puts one transport deployment on the stage, lets you change the input that decides the operation, and computes the answer. **Chapters**: 6 **Deployments**: 5 **Readouts**: 22 **Scale**: 1:1 metres **01** Road weather **02** Corridor spacing **03** Small-airport weather **04** Port met-ocean **05** Highway coverage **06** Proof **01** · Road weather Psychrometry ## Frost forms when the deck is below the dew point. A road weather station beside a bridge: air temperature and humidity on the mast, a pavement sensor flush in the lane. Frost forms on a surface colder than both freezing and the dew point of the air above it, which is why a bridge deck ices before the road. Set the air and the deck to see the call the maintenance crew gets. Dew point from the Magnus formula with the Alduchov–Eskridge constants (17.625, 243.04 °C). **Dew point**: -0.3 °C **Deck below dew point by**: 0.7 K **Call**: Frost forming on the deck **02** · Corridor spacing Geometry ## Every kilometre within reach of a station. A transportation department places stations along a corridor so that no stretch of road is far from a reading. With stations every s kilometres, the farthest any point of road sits from the nearest station is s/2. Set the corridor length and the spacing to count the stations and the worst-case gap. **Stations**: 9 **Farthest point from a station**: 15.0 km **Stations per 100 km**: 3.8 **03** · Small-airport weather Vectors ## Crosswind decides the runway. An automated weather station at a small airport reports wind to pilots and to the approach. What matters on landing is the wind across the runway, V·sin θ, and along it, V·cos θ, where θ is the angle between the wind and the runway heading. Turn the wind and pick the runway to see which end to use and the crosswind it brings. Runway **Use runway**: 27 **Headwind component**: 13.8 kt **Crosswind component**: 11.6 kt **04** · Port met-ocean Radio horizon ## Height buys range at sea. A wave buoy at the harbour mouth reports height and period; a receiver ashore hears the position broadcasts that ships send on VHF. Both stop at the radio horizon, about 4.12(√h₁ + √h₂) kilometres for antenna heights in metres under standard refraction. Raise the shore antenna and pick the ship's to see the range grow. Ship antenna height **Radio horizon**: 42.0 km **In nautical miles**: 22.7 NM **Sea area inside the arc (half disc)**: 2,773 km² **05** · Highway coverage Geometry ## No dead zone between towns. Small cells along an unserved highway, each backhauled by a satellite terminal where there is no fibre. Sites go one cell diameter apart, less the overlap a handover needs: n = L / (2r(1 − o)). Set the road length, the cell radius the terrain allows and the overlap. **Site spacing**: 10.2 km **Sites**: 13 **Satellite terminals (one per site)**: 13 **06** · Proof Service level ## Availability, written into the contract. What a transport authority asks to see, from the sector research. Maintenance service levels turn into arithmetic: an availability target allows a number of hours down per year, and the time to repair decides how many failures fit inside them. - Civil-aviation and transport-authority approvals where they apply - Transportation specification conformance (NTCIP 1204) - Maintenance service levels **Downtime allowed per year**: 87.6 h **Failures that fit, at that repair time**: 3 ## Weather where the traffic is. Road weather networks, airport stations, port met-ocean and corridor coverage, designed to the transport authority's specification and kept running to its service levels. [Talk to us](https://observatory.global/contact/) [Sector overview](https://observatory.global/sectors/transport/) [Plan a deployment](https://observatory.global/contact/deployment/) [Nexus Observatory](https://observatory.global/)**Transport and logistics** . Corridors that report their own conditions.[Talk to us](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/contact/) Transport - [Use cases](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/use-cases/) - [Solutions](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/solutions/) - [Systems and technologies](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/systems/) - [Frontier](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/frontier/) - [Open](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/open/) - [Community](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/community/) - [Countries](https://observatory.global/industries/transport/countries/) Platforms - [Sensors & instruments](https://observatory.global/sensors/) - [Connectivity](https://observatory.global/connectivity/) - [Edge compute & AI](https://observatory.global/edge-ai/) - [Data & licensing](https://observatory.global/data-products/) - [Space and satellite systems](https://observatory.global/space/) - [Positioning, navigation and timing](https://observatory.global/#lines) - [Earth observation & GeoAI](https://observatory.global/earth-observation/) Infrastructure and industry - [Energy](https://observatory.global/industries/energy/) - [Telecom](https://observatory.global/industries/telecom/) - [Infrastructure](https://observatory.global/industries/infrastructure/) - [Mining](https://observatory.global/industries/mining/) - [Industry](https://observatory.global/industries/industry/) Open - [Protocol](https://observatory.global/protocol/) - [Technologies](https://observatory.global/technologies/) - [Industries](https://observatory.global/industries/) - [Countries](https://observatory.global/countries/) © 2026 Nexus Observatory Inc. [Privacy](https://observatory.global/legal/privacy/) [Terms](https://observatory.global/legal/terms/) [Accessibility](https://observatory.global/legal/accessibility/) [Cookie settings](https://observatory.global/privacy-choices/) [Data credits](https://observatory.global/credits/)