Scenario-Based MPC for Real-Time Passenger-Centric Timetable Scheduling of Urban Rail Transit Networks

Effective timetable scheduling strategies are essential for passenger satisfaction in urban rail transit networks. Most existing passenger-centric timetable scheduling approaches generate a timetable according to deterministic passenger origin-destination (OD) demands. As passenger OD demands in urban rail transit networks generally show a...

Modeling and Efficient Passenger-Oriented Control for Urban Rail Transit Networks

Real-time timetable scheduling is an effective way to improve passenger satisfaction and to reduce operational costs in urban rail transit networks. In this paper, a novel passenger-oriented network model is developed for real-time timetable scheduling that can model time-dependent passenger origin-destination demands with consideration of a...

Hierarchical Model Predictive Control for on-Line High-Speed Railway Delay Management and Train Control in a Dynamic Operations Environment

In practice, the operation of high-speed trains is often affected by adverse weather conditions or equipment failures, which result in delays and even cancellations of train services. In this article, a novel two-layer hierarchical model predictive control (MPC) model is proposed for on-line high-speed railway delay management and train...

An MPC-Based Rescheduling Algorithm for Disruptions and Disturbances in Large-Scale Railway Networks

Railways are a well-recognized sustainable transportation mode that helps to satisfy the continuously growing mobility demand. However, the management of railway traffic in large-scale networks is a challenging task, especially when both a major disruption and various disturbances occur simultaneously. We propose an automatic rescheduling...

A decision support approach for condition-based maintenance of rails based on big data analysis

In this paper, a decision support approach is proposed for condition-based maintenance of rails relying on expert-based systems. The methodology takes into account both the actual conditions of the rails (using axle box acceleration measurements and rail video images) and the prior knowledge of the railway track. The approach provides an...

A big data analysis approach for rail failure risk assessment

Railway infrastructure monitoring is a vital task to ensure rail transportation safety. A rail failure could result in not only a considerable impact on train delays and maintenance costs, but also on safety of passengers. In this article, the aim is to assess the risk of a rail failure by analyzing a type of rail surface defect called squats...

Probabilistic defect-based risk assessment approach for rail failures in railway infrastructure

This paper develops a defect-based risk analysis methodology for estimating rail failure risk. The methodology relies on an evolution model addressing the severity level of rail surface defect, called squat. The risk of rail failure is assessed by analyzing squat failure probability using a probabilistic analysis of the squat cracks. For this...

Deep convolutional neural networks for detection of rail surface defects

In this paper, we propose a deep convolutional neural network solution to the analysis of image data for the detection of rail surface defects. The images are obtained from many hours of automated video recordings. This huge amount of data makes it impossible to manually inspect the images and detect rail surface defects. Therefore, automated...