Digital Twin of Railway Infrastructure enabling Smart Railway Operation and Maintenance

Abstract

The purpose of this contribution is to highlight the importance of digitized railway infrastructure for a wide field of innovative applications in the domain of railway operation, maintenance and management. Starting from brief descriptions of railway operations scenarios acting as use cases for digitized railway infrastructure, the focus of the work will be on requirements and design principles for creating, maintaining and using a digital railway infrastructure data base. By referring to related research project activities at DLR Institute of Transportation Systems, specific steps for an implementation strategy of a digital railway infrastructure database will be shown. In the concluding part, it is analyzed how international cooperation should be integrated to push the topic forward and guarantee an international interoperable digital twin of Mongolian railway infrastructure.