Quantum Technology - Potential for Railway Infrastructure (QT-PRI)

QT-PRI is a collaboration between RSK, Atkins, Network Rail and the University of Birmingham (UoB) to establish the Quantum Technology (QT) gravity sensor market opportunities against assessment of current geophysical technologies to detect and assess the condition of assets buried below the railway network, in particular drains, as well as water flow through the railway earthworks. There are over 190,000 railway earthworks and over 6000km buried assets. The incomplete and immature asset inventory significantly limits the development of a decision support framework to allow proactive condition assessment thereby maximising the limited resources and keeping the rail network operational. Currently, geophysical sensors are commercially used to detect the location of the ducts and pipes in roads and with limited success on the railways, but are rarely used to detect the asset condition or the condition of the parent asset (earthwork) itself. Thus, currently geotechnical failures are often reported by train drivers or by walking the asset at a cost of ~£8M/year. This limits any proactive asset management and often results in longer disruptions to the rail network. To overcome these limitations and open up a new application for geophysical sensors, QT-PRI will: 1) Establish the market potential for QT gravity sensors for railway infrastructure by benchmarking it against the most advanced state-of-the-art geophysical instrumentation currently used in the railway industry; 2) Develop novel post-processing techniques to identify the signal of interest, especially along the rail network and Undertake field trials to demonstrate the real-world capabilities and limitations of existing sensors to identify the operational space for QT sensors; 3) Determine technical sensor specifications for QT gravity sensors and 4) Assess the market of QT gravity instruments used both at train speed and quasi stationary to detect buried assets and visualise water flow in railway earthworks.

QT-PRI will accelerate the commercialisation of QT gravity instruments in three ways: 1) ensuring that the sensor development and system engineering efforts produces instruments that are fit for purpose by providing sensor configuration and performance parameters with particular focus on time-lapse assessment and data collection at train speed, 2) increasing the marketplace for the sensors by engagement with a client base not yet familiar with QT sensors, excellent dissemination activities, and practical field demonstrations and 3) demonstrating what can be achievable from commercial geophysical system with respect to sensitivity, resilience, size, weight and cost in comparison with the Return on Investment using QT gravity sensors.

QT-PRI will open up a new market for QT gravity sensors by:
1) Assessing in detail the capability and limitations of the best suite of current geophysical sensors for the railway environment;
2) Increasing the marketplace for the sensors by engagement with the client base, excellent dissemination activities, and practical field demonstrations of prototype equipment capability.

The beneficiaries from this research are diverse and include:
1. RSK's clients (e.g. civil engineering consultants, town planners, utility companies, councils, Highways England, major projects such as HS2, Thames Tideway, nuclear industry)
2. Atkins' clients (Environment Agency, Highways England)
3. Surveying practitioners (e.g. RSK and others)
4. Network Rail who can carry out a more informed asset management and deterioration assessment, thereby optimising the time and cost of any interventions
5. Train operators, who will benefit from a better maintained railway infrastructure and reduced line closures due to asset failures
6. civil engineers who can determine the condition of earthworks and thus develop novel engineering solutions and practices to maintain the aging infrastructure
7. UK-based and international academics.
8. the general public who will benefit from a reduction delays on the rail network due to better asset management

The short-term impact of this feasibility will be that it will develop detailed technical specifications required for QT gravity sensors used in the rail environment and determine detailed acquisition and data quality parameters in parallel with processing and inversion techniques required to interpret the data collected using QT sensors. Moreover, it will benchmark against existing geophysical sensors in order to determine the market opportunities. This may also lead to improved survey methodologies and data processing in the short-term before the commercial QT sensors come to market. The improved survey strategies necessary for realising the full potential of QT gravity sensors can also be utilised for 'traditional' geophysical surveys.

In addition, the end-users are being engaged early on in the sensor development process opening a channel of communication between the physics researchers and the practitioners. This is vital to ensure the developed sensors are useable in the extreme railway environment with short possession times and stray electromagnetic signals. Furthermore, the practitioners' clients will be able to see the potential of the new QT sensors based on the developed forward models thereby providing confidence in their capabilities. QT-PRI will create the first ever assessment of using the QT gravity sensors for railway infrastructure assets and review the use of time-lapse assessment to determine the water flow through earthworks, thereby increasing the confidence of the market and providing feedback to the sensor development. The engineering driven research takes into account user needs, promoting industrial adoption & generating social and economic impact, e.g. by providing enhanced asset information reducing network delays. This is an essential step to build sufficient commercial confidence in potentially disruptive QT.

On a 10-50 year timescale, the QT sensors could revolutionise a wide range of industrial processes, as diverse as resilient communication networks; structural analysis (e.g. in aerospace); functional analysis (e.g. electronic components); improved oil and gas recovery; CO2 sequestration supervision; construction work using underground space; assessment of water infrastructure; detection of sinkholes; assessment of the condition of dams in flood prevention.

The researchers working on the project will gain enormously by working on a multi-disciplinary project that has a clear, practical application and requires active interaction with the partner company on the project on a professional level. This will undoubtedly make the researchers much more employable in the future. The academic will benefit by being involved in such a prestigious, multi-disciplinary project which has the potential to make a tangible difference in the future. It further addresses an issue that the public is familiar with in respect to delays on the rail network. This will help to further raise their profiles in the academic community.