Page 29 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

New technologies applied to railway maintenance

Data processing, integration and interface platformsare the nexus in the Connected Industry
leveraging integrated systems and corporate applications to provide real added value to
maintenance activities.
Large technology providers, communications and industrial services are developing data
integration platforms and associated Cloud Computing services, Reporting, Security Management,
intending to concentrate activity and to become an industrial benchmark. In parallel Open
Source platforms are also emerging intending to provide roughly equivalentservices.
On the other hand, data transmission protocols are also being adapted to the Connected
Industry, for example Sigfox, LoRa standards improving the efficiency and optimizing the energy
consumption of the interface.
Integration Platforms are the core of Big Data, setting-up the basic structure to provide integrity
and analysis potential to exchanged data, from which it is possible to launch algorithms and
processing routines to extract the relevant information.
In the field of railway maintenance, this basic data structuring is even more important because
of the great heterogeneity in the sources (customer, infrastructure, vehicles, maintenance) and
in the information provided, sometimes lacking the minimum required reliability to subject to
analysis.

Decisions surrounding the selection and management of these platforms are complex and due
to the current dynamism that they must be supported by work groups with adequate vision and
technical skills.

2. Adoption strategy

Defining a clear strategy for introducing new technology, providing it with a plan and specific
resources for its achievement and involving all levels of the organization are key factors to
secure the integration project.
To this end, it may be appropriate to carry out an initial evaluation of the possibilities of the
new technology to solve those relevant problems and inefficiencies noticed by the organization
together with the required changes or adaptations. On the other hand, segmenting new tools
according to their state of maturity and risk for evolution, together with the ratio [outcome
quality -cost of the investment], will provide better insight into the possibilities of technological
devices and into the associated risks.

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 27