Abstract

Andreas Seim
Research Manager at Sintef

Summary
How effective is Real-Time condition monitoring of switches? Where should we deploy this condition monitoring to provide the largest reductions in train delays? Effectively answering such questions requires new analytics based decision support that combines infrastructure data with train operations data. Such technology may facilitate more holistic and effective prioritization of infrastructure managers’ use of resources.

Failure of switches is a major cause of delays in old railway infrastructures. The Norwegian Infrastructure Manager Jernbaneverket, has deployed condition monitoring equipment on selected switches in 2015/16 to enable smarter maintenance practices and reduce failure rates. New maintenance processes and routines have been developed and implemented to realize benefits from with this technology. To help design further rollout in 2017, we set out to measure and document realized benefits of the current installations and to predict benefits of condition monitoring on the remaining switches in prioritized areas.  We have developed two algorithms that automatically identify and measure actual train delays caused by each failure based on detailed running times recorded in a traffic information management system. Combined with data from a maintenance management system to identify switch failures this capability allows for accurate measuring of effects of switch failures on train traffic. This formed the basis for measuring realized benefits of the implemented condition monitoring and for predicting the value of implementing the same technology on other specific switches.

Biography:
For the past 14 years, I have been conducting and sometimes leading research and innovation on the development of future work and organizations using enabling technologies. I am particularly interested in creating value with emerging technologies and rich data streams from daily operations of organizations. Since January 2014, I have been Research Manager of a group in SINTEF working in this area.

The RailTech Europe 2017 Conference will explore the following three themes:

Register