10146086RODENT (Railway Obstruction Detection, Evaluation, Notification and Triage)ClosedSmall Business Research InitiativeInnovate UKWe will determine, though a short R&D project, with testing and demonstration at GCRE, whether we could reliably detect and locate line blockages resulting from rockfalls along with the more gradual appearance of track obstructions from earth and sand movement. We intend to use our system Indus connected to optical fibres often already installed next to the railway for telecommunications purposes to detect potential obstructions. This will allow monitoring of vast railway lengths without need to install any equipment to the track. Over a period of two decades, similar fibre optic sensing systems have failed to achieve obstruction detection with acceptable false alarm rate, largely due to limitations of early fibre-optic sensing systems, and an over-reliance on the detection and characterisation of simple acoustic signatures may confuse a large object falling far from the railway with a small object falling close to, or on the rail. We have already differentiated our technology in its ability to detect small disturbances like intruders at a fibre offset of 20m and to compute the 2D position of intruder events with accuracy ~+/- 2m. We now need to understand and show how we can develop the capability of our detection algorithms in a way which can convince a sceptical marketplace that the reliable detection of potential line blockages, with low false alarm rate, can become a reality. Fibre sensing is a multi-purpose technology, using existing telecoms fibre cables to deliver ubiquitous sensing across tens of kilometres per installation. Every additional benefit-case that can be realised from an installation increases its affordability towards a point where it may become as essential as the fibre cables themselves.