The railway system is a complex technical system-of-systems (SoS). To address the complexity of the railway system, a holistic approach is needed that facilitates the development of an appropriate asset management regime. A systems-of-systems (SoS) approach considers the complex nature of the railway system, comprising interconnected subsystems like rolling stock and infrastructure. Neglecting these interdependencies risks sub-optimization of the overall system performance. Asset management, of the railway system utilising a SoS approach ensures the focus of asset management on overall system requirements. The efficiency and effectiveness of the railway system is based on aspects such as availability, reliability, and safety performance. To enhance these aspects, monitoring, and improvement of key performance indicators (KPIs) emphasizing increased capacity and reduced operational costs is essential. The KPIs offer quantifiable parameters for performance optimization. Augmenting asset management through data-driven technologies can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of asset management. However, challenges persist in the implementation of data-driven solutions due to the railway system's complexity and lack of a holistic perspective. A systematic performance-driven framework with a system-of-systems approach for augmented asset management of railway system provides handrail for the utilisation of data-driven technologies with railway system requirements at the centre while developing an asset management regime. The proposed framework aims to establish a clear relationship between system KPIs, and the performance of sub-systems and components aiding railway organizations in asset management design and implementation. This paper explains the important components of the proposed framework and demonstrates the application the framework for asset management and maintenance planning of high value components in the fleet of railway rolling stock. Adoption of the proposed framework is expected to enhance asset management through development and implementation of data-driven solutions that are aligned with system KPIs, to support asset management decision making.

Due to the accumulated greenhouse gas (GHG) effect, climate change will affect infrastructure networks regardless of different climate mitigation strategies. Our current investigation reveals an apparent increasing trend in the number of climatic-based failures in the Swedish railway infrastructure from 2010 until 2020.

Switch and crossing (S&C) is a critical part of the railway infrastructure network, which plays a key role in adjusting the railway network capacity and dependability performance. Due to the structure of S&C, it can be affected more by extreme climate change impacts, e.g., abnormal temperature, ice and snow, and flooding. Clearly, the reliability and hazard function of infrastructures will be affected by age and environmental conditions. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the effect of different climate change features / explanatory variables called "covariates" on the reliability of S&Cs. The proportional hazard model (PHM) is a practical approach to assess and prioritize the impact of various environmental covariates on S&Cs' reliability.

This paper aims to integrate climate change data with infrastructure asset health. This integration can be developed by utilizing proportional hazard methodology to assess the effect of different covariates on the reliability function. The proposed methodology has been verified through a number of S&Cs located on the Swedish railway network. As a main result, this study has revealed that the operational environment covariates significantly influence the reliability of S&Cs and profoundly affect the availability and capacity of railway tracks. The study indicates the need for effective climate adaptation options to reduce climate change impacts and risks to achieve resilience and climate-neutral railway infrastructure asset.

Railway overhead catenary (ROC) is a linear asset and spread over large area. Different regions of the linear asset are exposed to different climate conditions such as temperature, wind, and ice accretion and operating conditions. If these conditions disrupt the functionality, then it leads to failure resulting in line closure. Being ROC is a linear asset, condition monitoring (CM) is difficult due to large distances, climate conditions, costly due to requirement of special equipment at the location and effects the scheduled traffic by occupying the tracks. Hence, there is a need for technologies to monitor the condition of ROC through a cloud-based approach which has faster response time. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) can be used for CM of ROC. It collects spatial data in the form of 3D point cloud in various domains such as construction, mining and railways. LiDAR devices will be mounted on locomotives on a regular traffic. The point cloud data is processed to extract the railway assets such as tracks, masts, catenary etc. and surrounding vegetation. Further, processing of point cloud data can be used to extract exact location and position of the assets. One of the failure modes for ROC, if the distance between the two wires is less than the specifications, then it leads to failure. This paper develops a cloud-based approach to measure the distance between specific wires, through processing of point cloud data. This approach forms the foundation for data augmentation and development of hybrid digital twins (DT) of railway overhead catenary.

The health of mobile mining machinery is critical to the achieve effectiveness and efficiency in mining production. However, the performance of mobile mining machinery, such as dumpers, is influenced by factors such as the operational environment, machine reliability, maintenance regime, human factor, etc., that lead to the downtime of dumpers. These downtimes have significant consequences on the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and lead to decreased capacity, increased maintenance costs and reduces availability. The enablement of prognostics and health management (PHM) can contribute to improve the OEE in mining production.

Conventionally, the existing solutions focus mostly on the reliability and maintainability analysis of dumpers using failure data, maintenance data, operation data etc. Though several existing methods utilize condition monitoring techniques, there is less focus on monitoring the engine vibration and impact the health of the driver. In addition, the existing solutions are not real-time, scalable, or offline-based. Hence, the objective of this paper is to develop a concept for the enablement of PHM for the engine and driver comfort of dumpers. Furthermore, a cloud-based solution for condition monitoring of dumpers has been designed and developed. The solution can be used to assess the engine vibrations and seat vibrations and to estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of the selected features using standards. The cloud-based architecture is implemented on the AI Factory platform that enable PHM for the improvement of OEE. This platform also facilitates the enablement of a digital twin for components and systems within dumpers or other mobile mining machinery.

Asset Management of a complex technical system-of-systems needs cross-organizational operation and maintenance, asset data management and context-aware analytics. Emerging technologies such as AI and digitalisation can facilitate the augmentation of asset management (AAM), by providing data-driven and model-driven approaches to analytics, i.e., now-casting and forecasting. However, implementing context-aware now-casting and forecasting analytics in an operational environment with varying contexts such as for fleets and distributed infrastructure is challenging. The number of algorithms in such an implementation can be vast due to the large number of assets and operational contexts for the fleet. To reduce the complexity of the analytics, it is required to optimize the number of algorithms. This can be done by optimizing the number of operational contexts through a generalization and specialization approach based on both fleet behaviour and individual behaviour for improved analytics. This paper proposes a framework for context-aware now-casting and forecasting analytics for AAM based on a top-down, i.e., Fleet2Individual and bottom-up, i.e., Individual2Fleet approach. The proposed framework has been described and verified by applying it to the context of railway rolling stock in Sweden. The benefits of the proposed framework is to provide industries with a tool that can be used to simplify the implementation of AI and digital technologies in now-casting and forecasting.

Digitalisation is changing the railway globally. One of the major concerns in digital transformation of the railway is the increased exposure to cyberattacks. The railway is vulnerable to these cyberattacks because the number of digital items and number of interfaces between digital and physical components in these systems keep growing. Increased number of digital items and interfaces require new methodologies, frameworks, models, concepts, and architectures to ensure the railway system’s resilience with respect to cybersecurity challenges, such as adoption and convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) technology within the railway. This convergence has brought significant benefits in reliability, operational efficiency, capacity as well as improvements in passenger experience but also increases the vulnerability towards cyberattacks from individuals, organizations, and governments. This paper proposes a methodology on how to deals with OT security in the railway signalling using failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) and ISA/IEC 62443 security risk assessment methodologies.