The phrase “data is the new oil” was coined in 2006. Like oil, data is of little value unless it is extracted, refined, processed, and distributed. This metaphor also alludes to the case of Standard Oil which, in the early 20th century, the US Supreme Court ruled to be an illegal monopoly. Today there are similar concerns about companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft dominating the data marketplace. Yet data should be easily shared if the best use is to be made of it.
Data was the theme of the Railway Industry Association’s (RIA) Unlocking Innovation event ‘Intelligent Railways’ held on 7 December at the University of Birmingham UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) centre of excellence in digital systems.
The event consisted of keynote presentations, also available online, which were followed by presentations by various companies at their exhibition stands and tours of the UKKRIN laboratories. It was hosted by RIA’s innovation director, Milda Manomaityte, who advised that the focus of the event was better use of data. She encouraged delegates to complete RIA’s questionnaire seeking views on data and digital capabilities in respect of skills, organisational change, commercial arrangements, open access, standards, cybersecurity, and digital twins. Readers are also encouraged to complete this questionnaire by scanning the QR code.
Rail Data Marketplace
Claire Morrissey and Jez Smith are respectively the commercial and project leads for the Rail Delivery Group’s Rail Data Marketplace (RDM) project which started in September 2021. They explained how this aims to simplify access to rail data to make it more widely available to improve the customer experience, efficiency, and to stimulate innovation. With many data providers, there is no clear view on what data is available or its quality and formats. Hence accessing data is rarely straightforward.
The RDM will not host data. It will be a portal on which data publishers provide a full description of their datasets, including any conditions of use, so that potential users can see what is available. In this way, RDM aims to be an honest broker bringing data publishers and consumers together with data sharing agreements. RDM will also facilitate a ‘friction-free’ license agreement in a way that does not deter data use.
It seeks to achieve a balance of open and free datasets alongside chargeable commercial datasets to encourage and drive innovation. RDM will provide guidance to data publishers on the best practice in data and cyber-security as well as advising how data can be accessible. Publishers will be required to tag their data according to best practice and the RDM’s categorisation scheme, and be encouraged to follow Government guidance on web-based application programming interface (API) standards to ensure ease of data transfer.
The RDM service is not prescriptive about the standard or format of the data but will enforce governance if it is clear that there is not an appropriate level of data governance. RDM is now in its private beta phase being trialled with five publishers with eight data sets and 10 data consumers. It is anticipated that it will enter the public beta phase in April and go live in October.
ENRICH
The Enhanced Network Rail Information and data interchange (ENRICH) project will put all Network Rail data onto standard business platforms. Its sponsor is Amanda Hall who is Network Rail’s engineering expert (systems). She explained that ENRICH will support RDM by resolving the problems within Network Rail of the plethora of data formats, shortage of documentation, poor data quality and heavy-duty systems that limit agility.
Amanda advised that ENRICH will develop new Network Rail standardised systems for sharing data with standard simplified legal arrangements based on the open government licence. She was confident that this would shift the focus from data collection to data analysis. In its initial phase, ENRICH is to assess the benefits and validate technical and commercial outputs from the following three first use cases:
- Track Centreline data supplied open data to users
- Wheel Impact Load Detector and Fibre Optic Acoustic Sensing data sets merged and supplied to train operators
- Infrastructure Monitoring by train operators (e.g., on board OLE monitoring) for use by Network Rail
Amanda advised that she welcomed new ideas and appealed for early adopters and contributors to become involved.
HS2’s digital twin
HS2’s vision is to develop a virtual railway during design and construction so that a digital twin of the built asset can be handed over to operations and maintenance at least two years before the start of physical running. James Daniel, HS2’s head of digital engineering explained how this vision requires committed, competent people using the right technology and data which is formatted to link data sets together. This is supported by the BIM upskilling portal (www.bimupskilling.com) that HS2 has developed, which has an introductory video on its site overview page.
With 350 construction sites collecting data for this virtual model, this is now being put to the test. James advises that the virtual model of the construction of Old Oak Common station is now giving a three month look ahead. However, achieving this requires cultural change for which lots of conversations were required.
He explained that, compared with the analogue way of working in sequential steps, using the digital space offers far more opportunities for collaboration with consequent cost, time, performance, safety, environmental, and reputational benefits. It offers wider business benefits. For example, visualisations enable human resources to recruit school leavers and operators can practice emergency situations in a virtual environment.
Northern Trains
Northern Trains operates 2,200 services a day with its fleet of 364 trains which are a mix of electric and diesel units, the latter includes over 150 diesel units built in the 1980s.
Christine Lefroy-Owen, Northern’s innovation manager, explained how the company is innovating to solve its business challenges of accessibility, safety, reducing environmental impact and the use of data. One such initiative is its connected trains. Between 2017 and 2021, Northern refurbished 240 of its older trains in a £100 million programme delivered by Arriva TrainCare. From a passenger perspective this offered a much-improved environment which included free Wi-Fi and improved passenger information.
It also includes a raft of digital systems to improve maintenance and train performance. This work was supported by Icomera which used its X-series connectivity platform to manage on-board cyber-security and connect the various applications. These include passenger counting, energy metering, remote condition monitoring, and a driver advisory system. In this way, Northern’s older trains now have the connected systems that come as standard with new trains.
Christine advised how these systems have proved useful, for example in improving availability, although finding the best use for much of this data was work in progress.