Cost of Snow Removal

Prepared by:

Joseph Malkevitch
Department of Mathematics and Computer Studies
York College (CUNY)
Jamaica, New York

email:

malkevitch@york.cuny.edu

web page:

http://www.york.cuny.edu/~malk/

Cities of different sizes and governments that deal with snow over a certain geographic region (perhaps a county) typically have to put aside money for snow removal from roads under their supervision. Large corporations and other businesses may similarly have to set aside money for snow removal from the parking lots of its stores and corporate buildings. Some of the costs here may be covered by buying insurance against the possibility that costs will exceed expected ones or the size of funds that have been set aside.

One way of reporting costs to the public (or stockholders) is to give the cost of snow removal in terms of the cost per inch of snow that falls. Construct a mathematical model for computing the cost per inch of snow removal by analyzing the different issues that come into play in computing such a number by a fixed government/city or corporation/business.

What data might you want to collect to use as input for constructing a model for this situation?

When your hear on the news the amount of snow or rain that has occurred during a recent storm, how does the information you learn accord with your own perceptions of the amount of snow/rain that fell?