Cloud computing for maintenance of railway signalling systems

Signalling systems in railway allow the control, supervision and protection of railway traffic. These systems play an important part in a railway's capacity and availability. Thus, their reliability and maintenance are key concerns. A number of signalling systems are on the market today; these work to guarantee safety while meeting the required capacity of the network. In order to keep the railway network in an optimal state, it is critical for the signalling systems to have tools that can make data mining and analysis easier and faster. The solution described herein allows data mining and posterior analysis without depending on the elements that provide the data. This is a key factor for signalling systems, due to their complexity and continuous development. For integration purposes, a data collection and distribution system based on the concept of cloud computing is proposed to collect data or information pertaining to the assets of the railway signalling systems. From a maintenance point of view, a benefit is that information or data may be collected pertaining to the health, variability, performance or utilization of an asset.