A Survey on Railway Assets: A Potential Domain for Big Data

Abstract

The railway is an infrastructure insistent industry in which each railroad is operated and maintained on the basis of a significant quantity of data and information gathered from various sources. This paper examines the big data technologies to maintain and enhance the rail industry. Currently, a huge quantity of rail data is being collected at numerous sources in different countries. However, the available data is not effectively utilized with the traditionally existing techniques and technologies. Thus the significant information remains buried under a large number of gigabytes. The paper discusses, 5V’s concept of big data (velocity, volume, veracity, variety, and value) in the railroads monitoring system. Also addresses the different available monitoring systems for rail track defects, application of visual data analysis in railroads for passenger flow with a case study of Shanghai metro network, optimization in big data with a critical dissection of Metaheuristics method and how big technologies leads to big challenges in the real-time railway system.