Railway track geometry defect modeling for predicting deterioration, derailment risk, and optimal repair

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9744978-B2
Application number	US-201313906883-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 31, 2013
Priority date	Jan 11, 2013
Publication date	Aug 29, 2017
Grant date	Aug 29, 2017

Abstract

Geo-defect repair modeling is provided. A method includes logically dividing a railroad network according to spatial and temporal dimensions with respect to historical data collected. The spatial dimensions include line segments of a specified length and the temporal dimensions include inspection run data for inspections performed for each of the line segments over a period of time. The method also includes creating a track deterioration model from the historical data, identifying geo-defects occurring at each inspection run from the track deterioration model, calculating a track deterioration condition from the track deterioration model by analyzing quantified changes in the geo-defects measured at each inspection run, and calculating a derailment risk based on track conditions determined from the inspection run data and the track deterioration condition. The method further includes determining a repair decision for each of the geo-defects based on the derailment risk and costs associated with previous comparable repairs.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system, comprising:
a computer processor;
a storage device communicatively coupled to the computer processor, the storage device storing historical data collected for a railroad network; and
an application executable by the computer processor, the application configured to implement a method, the method comprising:
logically dividing the railroad network according to spatial and temporal dimensions with respect to the historical data collected for the railroad network, the spatial dimensions including line segments of a specified length and the temporal dimensions including inspection run data for inspections performed for each of the line segments over a specified period of time;
creating a track deterioration model from the historical data and corresponding spatial and temporal dimensions, current track conditions, and traffic data;
identifying geo-defects occurring at each inspection run from the track deterioration model, the geo-defects identified from data sets of the historical data according to the spatial and temporal dimensions;
calculating a track deterioration condition from the track deterioration model, the track deterioration condition calculated by analyzing quantified changes in the geo-defects measured at each inspection run;
calculating a derailment risk based on track conditions determined from the inspection run data and from the track deterioration condition; and
determining a repair decision for each of the geo-defects based on the derailment risk and historically determined costs associated with previous comparable repairs.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the railroad network is further divided into sections of two miles in length, and the calculating the derailment risk includes:
spatially aggregating the geo-defects at a section level;
temporally aggregating the geo-defects into each inspection level; and
creating a record from results of the spatially aggregating and the temporally aggregating.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Bhattacharjya Debarun
• Hampapur Arun
• He Qing
• Li Hongfei
• Parikh Dhaivat P

Classifications

• G06F30/20

  Design optimisation, verification or simulation (optimisation, verification or simulation of circuit designs G06F30/30) · CPC title

• G06Q10/06

  Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling · CPC title

• B61K9/08 Primary

  Measuring installations for surveying permanent way · CPC title

• B61L23/042

  Track changes detection · CPC title

• G06Q10/0635

  Risk analysis of enterprise or organisation activities · CPC title