2nd International GIS for Rail Summit – Paris, France

Jun 19, 2011
Jeff Thurston
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June 19th, 2011
2nd International GIS for Rail Summit – Paris, France

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iuc_gis_paris The 2nd International GIS for Rail Summit was recently held in Paris, France. This Esri organised event was sponsored by the International Union of Railways (UIC), a confederation of 197 worldwide members from 5 different continents. The event provided an opportunity for the participants to share interests, discuss issues and to learn about member initiatives involving geographic information system (GIS) use for rail. Additional attendees provided details about other geomatics technologies in use for improving railway operations.

Railways are changing rapidly. This shift involves the use of more digital technologies across the workflows and networks related to railway operations. GIS is poised to play an increasing role in the infrastructure development including the design, planning, operations and maintenance phases of railway operations.

Railways are attempting to operate their infrastructure more efficiently. Trains need to be scheduled more efficiently across networks, particularly with respect to trans-boundary operations as high speed operations move between different countries.

Since maintenance of railway lines can account for 20% of down time for operations, approaches that include maintenance within routine operations more effectively and efficiently are highly desired. The use of GNSS and lidar technologies coupled to railway repair and maintenance machinery can help, providing accurate location and positioning for railway construction and maintenance operations in a timely manner.

In other cases, IT operations linked to GIS functionality is providing advantages, streamling collaboration and sharing of administrative and technical data. Maps can be linked to railway schematic drawings through the use of ArcGIS software.

Terry Bills, Transportation Industry Manager at Esri summed up the challenges of GIS for rail as follows:

Better data collection and currency
GIS integration within existing workflows
How can we begin to move GIS into operations

“The drivers for accuracy can be applied to signals, track, electrical and bridges,” he said. Another issue that he touched on was maintenance of all the data, much of it flowing from sensors, and asked, “how can we begin to think about maintaining this information.” “We need to recognise that many of the capture technologies are high accuracy, and that we want to maintain that,” Bills pointed out.

He also suggested that the changes taking place include more than technical issues alone. “We need to think about changing workflows, and to consider that improved decision making is a result of these changes,” he said. “Since rail maintenance is 20-30% of overall railway costs, we need to think about reducing the lost 5-15% revenue related to these functions.”

“GIS has a major role in asset management,” Bills said. This includes:

Location details
Information from field to office – office to field
Strategic planning
Executive management

Finally, Bills pointed out that many rail users were not familiar with GIS necessarily and that a need existed to support workflows. “We need to develop simple interfaces for users,” he said.

Additional article and blog items related to this event:

– Cadastre Information System For Rail In Portugal

– GIS for Rail – Trimble Positioning for the Lifecycle

– GIS for Rail – Bulgaria Pushes the Infrastructure Envelope

– GIS for Rail: Integration in Denmark and Finland

– GIS for Rail: Linking Maps to Schematics

– GIS for Rail – Transport In a Changing Time