In today's digital age, the railway industry is undergoing a profound transformation, embracing innovative technologies to enhance efficiency, safety, and sustainability. One such technological marvel that could help to improve railway operations is the ICOS Edge-Cloud continuum system. In this blog post, we'll explore the remarkable benefits of ICOS and its application in a real-world railway use case featuring Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) and Worldsensing.

ICOS: The Foundation of Smart Railway Operations

ICOS is not just an operating system but a comprehensive ecosystem that seamlessly connects IoT devices, edge computing, and cloud resources to create a continuum of data-driven intelligence. The potential of ICOS for railway use case lies in its ability to integrate, manage, and optimize multiple aspects of operations, making it a valuable tool for modern railway companies.

FGC and Worldsensing partnership:

To validate the business value of ICOS in railway industry two important entities joint forces under the project:

• Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) - public railway operator in Catalunya region and
• Worldsensing, a leader in wireless IoT solution
  

The main challenge to be addressed by the use case is related to the continuous monitoring of critical infrastructure on rail tracks to ensure safety and improve maintenance activities.

Three main operational challenges will be supported by specific solutions that leverage ICOS offer, including:

• Energy-efficient solutions for low-power IoT devices provided by WSE will guarantee safety operation monitoring in real-time while ensuring a very long lifetime of the deployed technology in remote locations. ICOS will allow to improve the raw data transmission and balance processing between the edge and cloud.
• Improve wireless networking protocols to achieve reliable system operation in remote locations while ensuring connectivity management for the whole ICOS continuum.
• Edge-to-cloud orchestration of several applications according to complexity, processing, or time requirements while using the same devices deployed and improving the coexistence of real-time processing and coordination with cloud services.

The FGC´s railway line where Worldsensing sensors will be deployed is along an area where communications may be limited in availability and bandwidth, making it possible to benefit from processing at the edge while sharing limited amounts of extremely relevant information to the upper layers of other applications. FGC (end-user) has identified different applications that will be developed through ICOS relevant to railway operations:

• Rail track geometry: the application will support safe operations by deploying a digital and wireless monitoring system that will collect and deliver real-time information regarding the quality parameters to monitor critical infrastructure status to support the decision makers and to timely detect possible anomalies or physical threats regarding the railway track.
• Alarm detection: The alarm detection module is connected to the deployed devices, and it allows detection and acquisition of possible alarms. The detection of alarms and response actions can be required to be processed at the edge to ensure safe operations even if connectivity with upper layers is not fully available. Such response to events detected might also include the request for additional information to the physical devices to collect additional contextual data about the possible incidents and thus to better design or select a response plan.
• Maintenance: To optimize the decision-making process and to exploit all the available resources, the maintenance application will also be onboarded within the ICOS architecture. The objective of the application is to identify the trend and predict the moment when the condition where quality parameters would not be met, and therefore plan maintenance activities to mitigate such risk. The proposed application will request available resources at edge and cloud level based on connectivity and data transfer requirements and will run appropriately.

Conclusion: Edge to Cloud continuum for future Railways

Through railway use case, ICOS will validate its comprehensive approach to managing IoT devices, edge computing, and cloud resources bringing efficiency, safety, and improving sustainability to the forefront of railway operations. The partnership between FGC and Worldsensing demonstrates innovation in railway systems, ensuring they remain safe, relevant, and competitive in the 21st century.

As the railway sector continues to evolve, embracing technologies like ICOS is essential for staying ahead. ICOS is not just a solution for today but a bridge to the future, where railways are smarter, more efficient, and more passenger-friendly than ever before.