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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MOMIT (Multi-scale Observation and Monitoring of railway Infrastructure Threats)

Teaser

Summary

The MOMIT project will develop innovative products and solutions supporting the maintenance process of railway infrastructures. MOMIT concept is based on the exploitation of unmanned technologies as Earth Observation satellites and
RPAS-borne sensors.
Starting from collected data analysis, MOMIT will bring at cutting edge level the remote sensing technology: developing advanced post processing chains, data fusion, automation, defining new indicators from estimated parameters, MOMIT will design new operational workflows able to support intelligent asset management.
MOMIT will adopt a multi scale approach: Satellite and RPAS data will be combined in order to maximize their benefits and characteristics. A first overall analysis (with satellite and over long sections) will guide the detailed analysis and trigger specific preventive actions. Thus, maintenance activities are guided by this combined analysis with a general optimization of resources.
Effectiveness and efficiency of proposed solutions will be demonstrated by six main application cases, validated in a real operational environment:
- Ground movements: interferometry derived by SAR satellite data analysis will adopt to define tools and indicators supporting the user for detailed analysis and preventive actions planning
- Hydraulic activities: a combination of optical and radar satellite data will be used to monitor soil moisture and water bodies close to the track
- Natural hazards: anomalies along the track related to natural phenomena (as vegetation growth) will be monitored by the use of satellite data.
- Electrical system: RPASs will be equipped with innovative sensors to monitor electrical effects impacting on the infrastructure efficiency
- Civil engineering structures: a combination of satellite and RPAS data will be used to identify possible criticalities to the infrastructure
- Safety: anomalies and illicit activities along the track will be monitor by the use of optical a radar satellite data

Work performed

During this year, MOMIT focused its activities on the definition of user requirement and corresponding services, algorithms and processing methods while the demonstration activities themselves are planned for the next review period. Therefore, measurable and relevant details about the achievement of each listed objective have to be expected mainly for the next technical report. Anyway, any relevant detail collected during this review period integrates the description of MOMIT objectives reported below:
1- To bring at cutting edge level the remote sensing technology applied to railways infrastructure monitoring for both RPAS and Satellite based solutions. Some advanced technology will be combined and tested together to be used expressively for railways monitoring need.
2- To demonstrate value added capabilities of satellite data which are able not only to integrate standard technologies (including in situ data and RPAS-based monitoring) but also to complement or, even more, substitute them in some cases, with evident benefits in terms of costs, reliability, service coverage. The selected demonstrators take into account specific need from project user for an improvement of monitoring coverage and reduction of costs.
3- To develop new platform independent tools: tools and instruments supporting data analysis and the decision-making process that could be easily integrated into existing users systems, enriching them with new information and functionalities. The goal is to develop tools able to be integrated in existing systems for data and product improvement.
4- To define operational criteria for an effective and efficient use of unmanned technology highlighting benefits, complementarities and limitations with respect to standard monitoring technologies, taking into account economic and sustainability criteria for the adoption of the developed solutions on the basis of clear evidence derived by in field demonstratorsâ€™ results. Thanks to demonstrator implementation in real situation it will be possible to verify concrete benefit from use of unmanned technology to manage railways infrastructure.

Final results

The specific MOMIT achievements beyond the state of the art are overviewed in the following according to the main technologies/activities that will be performed in the project.
Satellite SAR and optical services. Satellite images will be exploited in order to provide different monitoring services for ground deformation analysis nearby the railway track, civil engineering infrastructure, water extent, soil moisture, vegetation, encroachment detection.
RPAS services: Indoor inspections are the most challenging tasks for RPASs as they require innovative platforms. Through this project, if successful, we aim to advance the state-of-the-art of Large-scale RPAS-based monitoring system.
Data fusion: the main ambition of the proiect is to develop tools that are tailored to the specific needs of the proposed monitoring solutions. This implies the development of tools to process and analyze the data in a consistent, effective and as automated as possible manner, and also to automatically extract information from the fused datasets.
Value added information: a novel methodology will be implemented for the semiautomatic classification and pre-screening of InSAR data. Additionally, this information will be used for a preliminary mapping of the expected damage (i.e. vulnerability) of railway facilities at small scale. Complementarily, the methodology will be improved and adapted for the preliminary damage assessment of railway infrastructures (e.g. bridges). Also in this project, RPAS will be used for the recognition and damage assessment of structures during early stages of damage during which the facilities exhibit low-moderate damage (e.g. fissures, settlements, etc.).
The MOMIT project includes a rich set of innovative technical aspects related to the railway infrastructure monitoring that will represent a remarkable improvement with respect to existing and currently used monitoring procedures, which often require manual, cumbersome, not completely safe, time-consuming and costly operations. The improvement will concern the automation of the monitoring tasks, the decrease of their cost, the standardization of the monitoring operations, the increase of the safety of the operations and the increase of accuracy, precision and repeatability of the monitoring.
The aim of the project is that the solutions to be developed will be integrated into the daily operational workflow of infrastructure monitoring and management, to provide an innovative range of products, able to support different types of monitoring tasks. The first straightforward advantage is the improvement of the railway maintenance operations, taking into account needs about the reduction of any operation that can cause a slowdown or interruption of the service. Another advantage is the capability to perform safe maintenance operations. A third advantage is the Life Cycle Cost reduction, thus contributing to achieve a cost efficient and reliable infrastructure.
MOMIT project results will strongly impact on the railway infrastructure maintenance process boosting the use of remote sensing data and unmanned technologies to generate new effective solutions in terms of products (value added information) and processes (operational workflows).