104027Smart railway/metro transportation using optical fibre sensing and Internet of Things (IoTs)ClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKThe increasing demand for improved efficiency and reliability in the rail industry worldwide drives the market for advanced asset and fleet management tools, including remote diagnostics (or prognostics) and better asset planning, offering real value-for-money to operators. Remote monitoring of railway electrification has proved to be a major technical challenge as the AC lomotives are powered at 25kV and travel at speeds up to 350 km/h under all weather conditions. The current measurement systems available have shown limitations due to the requirements of insulation of both their power delivery and data transmission. Their failure has severe consequences and causes a widespread traffic disruption. This project addresses the above challenges by exploiting the ideal insulator nature of the optical fibre itself through integration of optical fibre sensors into the current-collecting pantographs for better monitoring and control. This is further underpinned by the 'Internet of Things' which enables the 'things' (sensors) to exchange data collected via the Internet and supported by effective data processing and implementing intelligent algorithms, allowing a smart transporation network thus to be created for predicting failures, making diagnoses and triggering maintenance.