IoT-enabled Platform for Rail Assets Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance (i-RAMP)

In 2016, there were more than 233,000 cancelled rail journeys in the UK out of a total of 7.2 million planned journeys (Office of Road and Rail - ORR, 2016). The majority of these disruptions were caused by asset failures and unscheduled maintenance on the rail network. As a result, over £28 million was claimed by passengers from operators for service disruptions. Data available from rail network assets and users are sources of insight to address challenges experienced by passengers and station operators; unfortunately, this data has not been leveraged for this purposes (Network Rail 2016).

This project will develop an IoT-enabled Platform for Rail Assets Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance (i-RAMP). The i-RAMP system is composed of two outputs: (i) Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Simulation IoT Platform (ASIP), which will provide an interactive and holistic simulation platform to virtually evaluate the entire railway station, alert of potential failures and generate optimal maintenance regimes. (ii) Augmented Reality (AR) Toolkit, which will use mobile AR devices and Head Mounted Displays will support rail station maintenance. The i-RAMP system will employ techniques in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality (AR) to enable predictive and preventive maintenance. The project's outputs will significantly reduce time to fix failures and it will provide better value to the end users. In addition, the i-RAMP system will enable a deeper understanding of customers' behaviours and to predict how services can be dynamically scaled to meet the demand of the passengers.

_**Keywords**_: Predictive Augmented Reality for Rail Maintenance, IoT-based Intelligent Rail Stations, Enhancing Customer Experience in Rail Stations.