Overview of Infrastructure Charging, part 4, IMPROVERAIL Project Deliverable 9, “Improved Data Background to Support Current and Future Infrastructure Charging Systems”

Improverail aims are to further support the establishment of railway infrastructure management in accordance with Directive 91/440, as well as the new railway infrastructure directives, by developing the necessary tools for modelling the management of railway infrastructure; by evaluating improved methods for capacity and resources management, which allow the improvement of the Life Cycle Costs (LCC) calculating methods, including elements related to vehicle - infrastructure interaction and external costs; and by improving data background in support of charging for use of railway infrastructure. To achieve these objectives, Improverail is organised along 8 workpackages, with specific objectives, responding to the requirements of the task 2.2.1/10 of the 2nd call made in the 5th RTD Framework Programme in December 1999.This part is the task 7.1 (Review of infrastructure charging systems) to the workpackage 7 (Analysis of the relation between infrastructure cost variation and diversity of infrastructure charging systems).Before explaining the economic characteristics of railway and his basic pricing principles, authors must specify the objectives of railways infrastructure charging.principle of pricing ; rail infrastructure charging ; public service obligation ; rail charging practice ; Europe ; Improverail

D4.3: Digital Twin supported lean project planning, control and risk management

There is a considerable opportunity to improve the planning and control of construction work. The construction industry is still struggling to adopt to the digital revolution’s concepts due to complexity, uncertainty, the fragmented supply chain, the short-term thinking, and the culture of ad hoc solutions. The main purpose of this document is to describe the business and decision-making processes to support lean project planning, control, and risk management with digital twin data.There is a considerable opportunity to improve the planning and control of construction work. The construction industry is still struggling to adopt to the digital revolution’s concepts due to complexity, uncertainty, the fragmented supply chain, the short-term thinking, and the culture of ad hoc solutions. The main purpose of this document is to describe the business and decision-making processes to support lean project planning, control, and risk management with digital twin data. Additionally, this document also presents and describes a process model that has been developed for the construction phase. In this task, three demo-sites have been investigated. All three projects were building construction projects hence no infrastructure projects have been researched. To describe the designed process model, IDEF0-notation was used. A vital part of using digital twins to support process management and agile planning is the capture of data from the site. The produced process model contains five different process groups: initiating, planning, implementing, controlling, and closing and is generally based on the demonstration sites within the ASHVIN project and applicable to constructions sites worldwide. From each demonstration site information was gathered considering how data-collection had been conducted on each site using various digital tools and how they corresponded to the different KPI’s within the project. The methods were then analysed and evaluated how they could be implemented in a work breakdown structure (WBS) and location breakdown structure (LBS). These methods in combination with the process model allows the team to detect issues, react and adjust the schedule to make the whole process smoother. It can assist them in planning when to take in certain disciplines and when to order materials. During this task the demonstration projects were already in the construction phase, which meant that it was mainly controlling activities that could be conducted according to the process model. It would be interesting to be able to test the process model from the beginning of a construction project, in other words from the initiating phase. Multiple findings have been made throughout this study. The main takeaway from is how vital it is for a project to decide in an early stage the prerequisites that will be needed to control and affect the project during the construction phase. This is the reason why it is essential to make sure that the process model as well as the digital tools are applied in depth. The second point to be made is to understand that all the KPI’s mentioned in the results section can be collected using a multitude of different tools and methods. This report has met its main purpose of describing the business and decision-making processes to support lean project planning, control, and risk management with digital twin data.Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i InfraestructuraPreprin

Integrated asset management system for performance-based road maintenance contracts

Performance-based maintenance contracts (PBMC) for highways are increasingly becoming an attractive mechanism for transferring activities traditionally undertaken by the public sector to private entities. Increased financial pressures on governments, demands for improved service levels by highway users, and the operational efficiencies offered by the private sector, all create a strong business case for PBMC. In order to enable government road agencies and private sector investors to engage in the use of PBMC, there is a need for quantitative tools that allow both entities to 1) Properly structure the PBMC in terms of risk allocation, 2) Develop appropriate levels for service level penalties and incentives in the contract, 3) Determine appropriate targets for highway level of service, and 4) Determine the most cost-effective set of road maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) activities to be undertaken throughout the duration of the contract. This research developed a GIS-based Integrated Highway Asset Management System (IHAMS), which extends typical functionality of traditional pavement management systems to cover specific contractual requirements of PBMC. The system allows the analysis of both network-level and project-level asset management decisions. Defect-specific pavement deterioration models are developed using multivariate regression. Stochastic network-level deterioration models are developed using markov chains. Life cycle costing models are developed to cover specific financial obligations in PBMC like penalties and incentives, in addition to traditional M&R expenditure. A GA-based optimization modules is used to trade-off various decision scenarios that are beneficial to both road maintenance contracts and road agencies. A case study for the Cairo-Ismalliyah desert highway is used to demonstrate the capability of the system

Risk-Based Optimal Scheduling for the Predictive Maintenance of Railway Infrastructure

In this thesis a risk-based decision support system to schedule the predictive maintenance activities, is proposed. The model deals with the maintenance planning of a railway infrastructure in which the due-dates are defined via failure risk analysis.The novelty of the approach consists of the risk concept introduction in railway maintenance scheduling, according to ISO 55000 guidelines, thus implying that the maintenance priorities are based on asset criticality, determined taking into account the relevant failure probability, related to asset degradation conditions, and the consequent damages

Strategies for maintenance management of railway track assets

M.Ing. (Engineering Management)Abstract: Population growth and environmental issues are revitalizing the railway sector in a tremendous way. An increase in frequency of passenger traffic and rising loads of freight trains has an impact on dynamic railway track properties and components thereof. The challenge from the railway fraternity is to rise to the challenge by ensuring a safe, reliable and affordable mode of transport. The purpose of this research is to investigate the capacity needed to meet demand by maintaining the track components of the railway infrastructure cost effectively. The railway track is the most critical in terms of safety, influence on maintenance costs, availability and reliability of the train service. Profillidis (2012) highlights the fact that track maintenance expenses represent a significant percentage of total railway infrastructure expenses. In literature, different maintenance strategies, approaches and concepts are discussed in light with arguments raised by different scholars and researchers. The main research methodology utilised was the case study on maintenance strategies from different countries where data was mostly available. The reason for the chosen method was to standardise the research method across different countries as this made it easy to obtain the findings and arrive at recommendations of the research. The broader findings from different maintenance strategies were that the track maintenance approach still has to evolve from working in silos to working in a system that acknowledges that decisions taken from other departments can affect the quality of maintenance in future. The deterioration of the track system is mostly affected by the initial quality of the railway track after commissioning due to workmanship and track design, maintenance approach, type of rolling stock tonnages, speed of rolling stock, and environmental related issues. Design phase of the track acknowledges the systems thinking approach for quality and structural integrity. However, more can still be done to adopt approaches that foster inter-departmental coordination in the maintenance phase of the railway track asset lifecycle. Transnet faces a challenge of fulfilling its obligation by providing quality and cost effective maintenance to increase the reliability, affordability, availability and safety of its infrastructure with the ever-increasing freight volumes. The traditional approach of maintaining railway track assets does not bring in required outcomes that ensure high quality and cost effective maintenance as required by high intensity asset utilisation. Data collected from the..

Exploring Raw Safety Aspects in Aviation Industry

Aviation is the growing industry. Safety in the aviation industry is most important. Safety is affected by many factors such as environmental, economical, technical, and operational and many challenges are in the way of aviation safety to overcome from these hurdles .So this paper tried to explore the different safety aspects for the aviation industry. From the literature different research streams and research issues are discussed which affects the safety of the aviation industry. Keywords: Aviation Safety, Challenges, Safety Aspects, Environmental, Economical, Technica