ANSWER - Analysis of maintenance and inspection processes of railway infrastructure

The analysis of maintenance and inspection processes at infrastructure managers in different regions of the world provides an overview of the current practices of the processes measuring&preparing - analysing&evaluating - deciding on measures - maintenance. In addition to a wide variety of strategies, a state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice analysis are also carried out. Within the scope of the project, currently used technologies for the condition assessment of the railway infrastructure will be analysed and both the advantages and disadvantages of these will be shown. Based on this, the consideration of the components of the railway infrastructure that limit the service life in combination with the state of the art/practice analysis provides the gap of knowledge for each region. Based on the previous results, the potential of disruptive technologies such as Distributed Acoustic Sensing to support maintenance and inspection strategies in specific regions is examined and evaluated. It will also be investigated how the new system can be integrated into already existing environments and how it can support them.