Electronic Map of the Railway Traction Network

Overview

Client: PKP Energetyka / PGE Energetyka Kolejowa

Following the project of network inventory of the whole 20,000 km-long asset network of the Polish national railway power distributor (PGE Energetyka Kolejowa, formerly PKP Energetyka), as well as a successful implementation of the GRIDonLine application (Link do: Case 12, wersja ang) – currently developed under GRID.Networks name – our company got involved in the ambitious project of creating the Electronic Map of the Railway Traction Network (EMTN).

The purpose of this project was to build, in a GIS environment, a spatial database of the traction infrastructure components, based on a countrywide field inventory. Main functionalities of the EMTN cover: showcasing precise locations and relative positions of the assets, enabling visualization, editing and wide range of spatial analyses. As such, EMTN addresses several Client’s business needs:

• Capability for direct assessment of the technical condition of traction network assets,
• Support for managing processes at the interface between the distribution and traction networks through the availability of data for both networks within a single system,
• Support for traction network maintenance through access to the locations of traction network sections and assets, against the background of the distribution network and the full set of reference data and map layers,
• Support for traction network maintenance through system access to an object-based map of the traction network with spatially linked networks schemes and photographic documentation,
• Up-to-date sectionalizing diagrams available in electronic format,
• Increased automation of field crew planning, outage scheduling, and failure handling, with respect to specific traction network sections, disconnectors, and shared infrastructure,
• Map-based visualization of notifications regarding planned works and scheduled outages for specific traction network elements,
• Spatial presentation of failure statistics for traction network assets.

Implementation of the EMTN assumes developing the traction component of the GIRD.Networks (formely GRIDonLine) GIS system, consisting of a set of web applications: Mapper, Manager, Admin and Terrain. It also requires GIS integration with SCADA and DMS systems.

As part of the project, the network inventory of traction assets have been planned, along with the implementation and delivery of functionality for exporting traction network data to CAD format. The latter was aimed to support the maintenance of traction network sectionalizing diagrams.

Outcome & Impact

Due to the Client’s ownership restructuring, the project advanced to the stage of collecting hectometrage data for the entire railway traction network in Poland, as well as developing a pilot dataset comprising complete traction network information for a selected area. The design of the Electronic Map of the Railway Traction Network, together with the ‘Traction’ module of GRIDonLine (now GRID.Networks)—a solution built around probably one of the most sophisticated web applications in Poland—represents significant potential, pending the Client’s readiness to resume and finalize the project.