Insights

In a bold move that underscores its innovative approach and growth strategy, Cordel has expanded its operations into the U.S. and Latin American markets, bringing its advanced rail inspection technology to the largest rail network in the world. With a clear objective to improve the economics of railways, inspect and maintain assets and a deep commitment to environmental sustainability, Cordel aims to revolutionize the rail industry by becoming the single source of truth for rail LiDAR and video inspection data.

Developing a “Digital Twin” of infrastructure and assets is widely accepted as key to underpinning digital innovation, and many versions involve LiDAR. But Digital Twins vary hugely in the details – and the details are crucial. The top two details for railways are 1. accurate location and 2. effective integration for end-users. Accurate location across multiple capture sources (from different technologies and suppliers) provides the first stage in effective integration, creating a Multi-Modal Digital Survey that is the single source of holistic truth for end-users. Rail organisations looking to seize the promise of Digital Twins can accelerate innovation delivery with source-agnostic, accurate date/time/location stamped data capture accessible to end-users. Read on for the opportunities that this can drive.

In this Research Podcast, Zeus’ Robin Byde spoke to John Davis, CEO, and Paul Mullins, General Manager, Product & Delivery of Cordel.

This paper focuses on the application of AI for railway infrastructure asset management and the potential for AI to facilitate optimisation of the rail system. It is based on Cordel’s own automated sensor data acquisition (covering 35,000 track miles of data service per month) and our processing and analytics outputs, with our growing range of railway-specific AI/ML training sets.

Track Geometry measurement regimes used today are typically delivered by dedicated measurement trains and ‘attended’ systems. Its purpose is to measure track irregularities and drive remedial works to maintain acceptable ride quality and to prevent vehicle derailment risk. It could be argued that the approach is no different to the adopted methods of last century.