Geodata Infrastructure for the Management of Railway Assets-Related Research Data

Abstract

A system containing updated information on railway assets, including their condition, contributes significantly to the maintenance of railway networks and to ensure continuous service. The Institute of Transportation Systems (DLR-TS) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) carries out research in the area of condition monitoring using in-service trains. Massive amounts of measurement data are collected from various sensors mounted railway vehicles. There is an ever-growing amount of data, as several terabytes of measurement data are collected every year as a part of multiple projects. Furthermore, static and semi-static data on railway networks such as the topology of the network, the infrastructure elements in the network and their conditions are also gathered. Here arises a need for sustainable management of the raw datasets and the generated results to make them Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) over time to researchers within the DLR, and other stakeholders such as project partners, funding organizations and the public. This poster addresses the topic of management of railway infrastructure and measurement data through the development of a system called "Transportation Infrastructure Data Platform" (TRIDAP) that enables the storage, analysis and sharing of data in a FAIR-compatible way. The platform is setup using open-source software such as PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, GeoServer, GeoNetwork and Prometheus to name a few. DLR-TS is actively developing this platform. Datasets from DLR-TS and few other DLR institutes are planned to be stored in the platform during the course of the DLR-funded cross-domain project "Digitaler Atlas 2.0".