Requirements for Big Data adoption for Railway asset Management

Nowadays, huge amounts of data have been captured along with the day-to-day operation of assets including railway systems. Hence, we have come to the era of big data. The utilization of big data technologies for asset condition information management is becoming indispensable for improving asset management decision making. The vital information such as precursor information collected on failure modes and knowledge that may be available for analysis is hidden within the large extent of data. There are analysis tools incorporated with techniques such as multiple regression analysis and machine learning that are facilitated by the availability of big data. Therefore, the utilization of big data technologies for asset condition information management is becoming indispensable for improving asset management decision making. This paper provides a review of the requirements and challenges for big data analytics applications to railway asset management. The review focuses on railway asset data collection, data management, data applications with the implementation of Blockchain technology as well as big data analytics technologies. The need for, and the importance of big data analytics in railway asset management; and the requirement for the asset condition data collection in the railway industry are highlighted. Research challenges in railway asset management via application of big data analytics are identified and the future research directions are presented. © 2013 IEEE.