Railway assets: A potential domain for big data analytics

Two concepts currently at the leading edge of todays information technology revolution are Analytics and Big Data. The public transportation industry has been at the forefront in utilizing and implementing Analytics and Big Data, from ridership forecasting to transit operations Rail transit systems have been especially involved with these IT concepts, and tend to be especially amenable to the advantages of Analytics and Big Data because they are generally closed systems that involve sophisticated processing of large volumes of data. The more that public transportation professionals and decision makers understand the role of Analytics and Big Data in their industry in perspective, the more effectively they will be able to utilize its promise. This paper gives an overview of Big Data technologies in context of transportation with specific to Railways. This paper also gives an insight on how the existing data modules from the transport authority combines Big Data and how can be incorporated in providing maintenance decision making.