Remote monitoring of the railroad infrastructure's technology systems

May 11, 2016 | Reliance SCADA

The Railway Infrastructure Administration (RIA) is a state-owned company that manages assets representing the railroad infrastructure. Its main task is to fulfill the function of an owner/operator of the national and regional rail owned by the state. RIA's main objective is to offer carriers a high-quality and safe railroad infrastructure.

Source: www.szdc.cz

In 2015, a system for the monitoring of the railroad infrastructure's technology systems from remote locations was implemented for RIA. It is designed to transfer and capture data from different systems providing the operability of the railroad infrastructure. The end user (RIA) can visualize these technology systems, which are supplied by different suppliers, as a single presentation.

The main integrated systems

• Lighting at train stations
• Railroad switch electric heating
• Electrical fire alarm system
• Electronic security system
• Electric preheating devices
• Surveillance camera systems
• Public address systems at train stations
• Automatic fire-extinguishing system
• Reading of power consumption
• Passenger information systems
• Infrastructure of buildings

Control system

To collect data, protocol converters (InK ZAT) are used. These converters, which are based on SandRA Z210 PLC technology, are located in train stations. A protocol converter communicates with the technology systems via many various protocols over both a serial line and Ethernet. It has support for the following protocols: Modbus, MBus, Galaxy and Lites ESS proprietary protocols, SNMP, and some other protocols.

Data collected in InK ZAT is passed to integration servers (InS ZAT). They are servers located in RIA's regional directorates. Each directorate has two servers equipped with the Reliance SCADA system (Reliance 4 Control Server in a redundant configuration). Data received from InK ZAT is archived as needed and incorporated into the alarm system. The subsequent visualization of process data is unified and independent of the supplier of the technology system.

A passenger train (illustrative image)

The visualization application is divided into several levels – from regional maps to the common monitoring of the stations and systems included in InK ZAT. A particular train station and its systems are the most detailed part of the visualization application.

System managers can access the application using Reliance 4 Control or Reliance 4 Web Client. To access individual systems, user access rights are required.

The application is based on the advanced principle of data or information acquisition. Selected parts of data can be monitored by a certain group of system managers.

Today, the application is installed at three regional directorates – about 100 train stations, each with 5–10 systems. As RIA's rail lines are undergoing modernization, the application is constantly expanding. It is estimated to be ten times the current level.

Examples of visualization windows

A real-time map

The automatic fire-extinguishing system

Railroad switch electric heating

Reading of power consumption

Train control room temperature settings

Public address system topology

Passenger information system topology

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