It is a fact: Digitalisation based on IoT (Internet of Things) leads to an explosion of available intelligent devices in rail freight transport and raises the question of the data collection. This increase of data volumes and new offer for equipment is good news, because it contributes to a safer rail environment (e.g. improvement of the surveillance of the wheels’ axle to prevent a break). But in fact, there are many stakeholders in this sector using different kind of devices and that need different kinds of data, according to their field of action: wagon keepers for their fleet management and maintenance, customers and shippers for the Estimated Time Arrival among other information, customs, fire brigades, etc.
So the question is: how will we manage all the devices to talk to each other as well as the data that we will soon all be able to collect, as railway undertakings?
How will we be able to harmonise the information given by the devices and send it to the adequate stakeholders?
We have to think about the shared use of these intelligent devices and the data they produce. What we know for sure is that in order to create a competitive European rail freight area, we need these devices and data to be interoperable. This means that we need to work on the standardization of our IT systems with solutions that are not too costly and with the open source model in mind.
The idea is to contribute to improve the dematerialisation of our services to the benefit of a wide range of stakeholders in an open market environment in which our competitiveness is one of the main assets to tackle the climate change issues we are facing.
Support Rail Freight Forward!