University of Delaware conference aims to help railroads deal with big data

Written by Mischa Wanek-Libman, editor
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The University of Delaware’s first mini-conference, “Track Maintenance Planning in the Era of Big Data,” had a strong turnout.

A railroad track geometry vehicle regularly collects a terabyte or two of data every month. How to store that much data is one challenge, but a much more pressing challenge is how to turn the raw material into useful information.

An inaugural mini-conference from the University of Delaware, “Track Maintenance Planning in the Era of Big Data,” began a conversation on the pressing topic of how railroads extract meaning from the information.

The conference took place in early December and was organized by the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program of the University of Delaware’s College of Engineering and the University’s Center for Big Data Research and Education with the aim of “converting the ‘mountain’ of inspection data collected by railway systems into effective maintenance planning information.”

“The mini-conference was very successful, with a full-to-capacity group of over 100 attendees from industry and academia, including virtually all of the major U.S. railroads, Amtrak and numerous transit systems,” said Dr. Allan M. Zarembski, research professor and director of the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program at the University of Delaware.

The mini-conference featured four sessions taking on such subjects as Track Inspection and Data Collection, Railroad Maintenance Planning, Emerging Data Analysis Techniques and Application and Case Studies. Attendees listened to 20 speakers and were also afforded networking breaks throughout the day.

The conference is one of the joint projects being organized by Dr. Zarembski and Dr. Nii Attoh-Okine, who was recently named the head of the University’s Center for Big Data Research and Education.

“The feedback received was that the conference hit the mark, that railroads and transits are being ‘overwhelmed’ by data and they need better tools to convert data into usable information for track maintenance management. We are looking for this to be an annual event and will try to focus strongly on the emerging techniques to address this bid data issue and their application to railroad, transit and related industry situations,” said Dr. Zarembski.

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