Railroads are beginning to realize that the rail sector is no exception when it comes to the potential value-added opportunities enabled through the use of IoT technologies. Meanwhile, industry stakeholders are exploring digitalization as a mechanism to create entirely new and optimized web maintenance systems with predictive qualities. The global market for predictive maintenance, including IoT-based remote monitoring of trains and tracks, is still evolving. It has an expected annual growth rate of 21 percent over the next three years.

With the proliferation of IoT and digital technologies, railway operators and infrastructure managers are able to use intelligent data to improve grid availability, extend asset life, increase capacity and reduce maintenance downtime and costs. Although railways are optimizing the data gained from the IoT, one of their main challenges is to stay up to date with the latest innovative technologies available in order to continue to benefit from these continuous advances.

Perhaps some of the greatest opportunities for the rail sector lie in logistics.

The impact of the IoT on the logistics sector is already showing the possibilities for huge improvements in end-to-end visibility benefiting the end user. The way we transport people and goods by rail is becoming unrecognizable. As industry leverages the very best industrial IoT and the most advanced big data analytics solutions, the physical and digital worlds can finally come together.

This will make the industry’s shared goal of modal shift from road to rail an achievable reality. Now is the time for the entire rail industry not only to keep up, but to overtake other transport providers by fully embracing the digital world.

Our author Ben Holliday, trained as a media producer at the University of Lincoln, was Head of Sales for the specialist publication Global Railway Review from 2005 to 2017.Since then he has been the founder and managing director of the event company ROTAIA. Top photo: Meeting place for data experts from the railways: The conference “The Rise of IoT & Big Data in Rail” in Cologne. Photos (2) Hermann Schmidtendorf

The congress “The Rise of IoT & Big Data in Rail” returns to the conference calendar for the fifth year in a row.

It has firmly established itself not only as the rail industry’s leading event to get a clear and pragmatic picture of the digital challenge, but also as a recognized event, a meeting place trusted by leaders in the rail industry.

This exclusive niche event will explore the vast breadth of predictive maintenance and big data applications for asset optimization.

It will enable infrastructure managers and railway operating companies to understand how they can benefit from setting up the intelligent data collection tools used by the Internet of Things to achieve their goals of increasing capacity, improving reliability, minimizing downtime and reducing maintenance costs.

Visit www.iotandbigdatainrail.com to find out more, see the impressive program and register to take part.

The event will take place in Cologne, Germany on May 31 & June 1, 2023.

Ben Holliday