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Scottish Sensor Systems Centre

Network Rail – Remote Condition Monitoring Funding Call

Funding Call Competition

Closing Date: 29 January 2014

About the Call

Remote condition monitoring (RCM) is already widely used on both trains and rail infrastructure, for example through Network Rail’s Intelligent Infrastructure Programme. The future railway will be under more pressure to carry more passengers and freight, making RCM a necessity.  However there are still significant railway performance challenges which do not yet have RCM solutions.

This competition is targeted at 10 of these unsolved challenges and aims to offer innovators the opportunity to prove their solutions on the operational railway.

Challenges & Funding
Working with the Network Rail and South West Trains Wessex Alliance to provide 90% funding, this £3million competition offers funding for feasibility studies and/or demonstrator projects and covers 10 key remote condition monitoring challenges:
  1. Further reduce operational incidents by (near real time) analysis of existing data sets leading to predictive trend analysis
  2. Yield alerts/alarms which are relevant, help ensure the right operational response happens in real time, and use the data for predictive purposes to optimise safety and performance
  3. Detect and prevent potential safety risks using 24/7 High Definition visibility of the network
  4. Detect early the likelihood of flooding in risk areas with information provided in a timely fashion
  5. Secure railway boundaries and monitor access gates
  6. Detect voids in the track at an early stage to prevent asset failures and to be able to identify the speed at which the asset is deteriorating from the impact loading of trains, particularly at critical, high risk junctions
  7. Achieve a validated system that monitors crack propagation in rail crossings
  8. Prevent trains running across track which is rendered unusable by movement of earthworks such as cuttings and embankments
  9. Achieve improvements in track circuit reliability
  10. Achieve improvements in signalling power supply reliability
The competition forms part of the Future Railway portfolio of activities to accelerate innovation led by the Enabling Innovation Team (EIT) on behalf of the Technical Strategy Leadership Group.
For enquiries about the competition please  contact the team via email    or Twitter at .

Published on December 11, 2013