Railway infrastructure is often a lifeline of a community or country . It connects people, communities and businesses. However, railway infrastructure is getting old and there is indequate resource to replace them, leading to financial, operational and safety challenges. Collapses of bridge in various countries continue to happen, leading to catastrophic consequences. Additionally, tracks, wheels, pipelines, tunnels and embankments and related infrastructure are all susceptible to degradation (erosion/corrosion/wear) or instability throughout their lifetime exposure to natural hazards (e.g. flooding, scour, soil instability, wind).
Safer, longer lasting and economically viable infrastructure is a key challenge and it requires a radical digital transformation to monitor the assets rapidly. There is a need to reduce repetative human intervention, while keeping the final decision making processes to the infrastructure owners and managers to continue to have a sustainably managed, safer and longer-lasting infrastructure.
In TRaIn, we propose a radical approach by instrumenting trains in operational conditions with bespoke measurement chains, thereby converting a moving train as an automatic sensor for infrastructure monitoring and assessment. Proof-of-concept and feasibility validation exists for this idea through co-creation.We continue to work closely with societal champion (Irish Rail) and the technology is fit for industrial application. Initial viability of the idea is proven and this project will address the last mile for full-scale implementation, bringing the idea for public use and benefit. Existing expertise in structural engineering and besoke monitoring technologies will be complementarily supported cutting-edge data science and machine learning with relevant data security, so that the solutions are developed robustly, for future and/or translational challenges and adaptations in related sectors.