Adaptive method and device for prediction of a weather characteristic of a surface of a road segment

An adaptive device for predicting a weather-related characteristic of a surface of a segment of a road network, comprising a communication interface, a processor and a memory, the processor and the communication interface being configured by instructions stored in the memory and being configured to implement:

• receiving, from a measuring vehicle,
• a location of the measuring vehicle, and
• a second weather-related characteristic of the surface of the road segment, which second characteristic is measured by a sensor of the measuring vehicle at said location;
• determining a road segment on which the first vehicle is traveling on the basis of the received location;
• selecting, from a plurality of prediction models, a first prediction model associated with the determined road segment;
• predicting a first weather-related surface characteristic by applying the first prediction model to a weather-observation history obtained for the determined segment;
• computing a first value E1 representative of the difference between the first weather-related characteristic predicted for the road segment and the second weather-related characteristic measured by the measuring vehicle;
• and
• when the computed first value E1 is greater than a first threshold:
• predicting a second weather-related characteristic by applying at least one second prediction model to the weather-observation history of the determined segment,
• computing a second value E2 representative of the difference between the weather-related characteristic measured by the measuring vehicle and the predicted second weather-related characteristic;
• when the second value E2 is less than the first value E1, associating the second prediction model with the road segment;
• and
• transmitting, to at least one second vehicle traveling on the segment, a weather-related surface characteristic predicted by applying the prediction model associated with the segment to the weather-observation history of the segment.