INDUSTRY INSIGHT // PARTNER SOLUTIONS
ARTC CREATES DIGITAL TWIN
OF ENTIRE NETWORK by the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC)
The Australian Rail Track Corporation is making a strategic investment in Mobile LiDAR and Imagery datasets to modernise its asset management practices.
T
he Interstate Asset Capture Project will adopt a ‘collect once, use many’ philosophy as it uses the collected spatial information to enhance the immediate and evolving data requirements of critical ARTC projects. ARTC Interstate Network General Manager, Brian Green, said the ARTC team performed a survey across the entire ARTC interstate network which required detailed and careful planning as well as close collaboration between project stakeholders to ensure that the highest quality outcomes would be met. The whole-of-network survey, combined with existing data in Ellipse and technology-based visualisation solutions, also allowed ARTC to create a Digital Twin of the entire ARTC rail network, allowing staff to undertake virtual site visits within a 3D panoramic imagery environment. PROJECT EVOLUTION Mr Green said that to support ARTC’s new direction of moving from a “time and tonnes” to “risk and condition” model to underpin strategic technology investments, ARTC needed to create and leverage foundational spatial datasets for its asset management systems and other projects. “These datasets would include a comprehensive spatial inventory of assets and digital track centrelines that would be validated for the business to use,” Mr Green said. “To create these foundational datasets, ARTC has worked closely with technology partner Agonics to design and plan a survey program covering 9,000km of interstate track.
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June 2021 // Issue 19
“We chose to work with Agonics due to their team’s deep experience in working at scale across rail networks, their proven Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) and visualisation technologies, and expertise in converting complex rail engineering requirements into working solutions.” Mr Green said ARTC has taken a strong standards-driven approach and is investing significant time to develop and test new field capture standards which will now be the benchmark for field data capture across the organisation. “Our new datasets are accurate, reliable, trusted and consolidated, allowing ARTC to move from a traditional asset management strategy to a digitally-robust, data-driven asset management system,” Mr Green said. “We started capturing the data in July 2019 and despite a short suspension of the project during the national COVID-19 lockdown, we recently celebrated the successful completion of all field recording activities with the remaining digital datasets due for delivery later this year.”
THE DEMAND FOR SPATIALLY ACCURATE, VALIDATED DATASETS The primary purpose of the Interstate Asset Capture Project is to modernise ARTC’s asset management practices and support key asset management initiatives including the development of an ARTC GIS Model, Linear Referencing System and the deployment of Ellipse Mobility eWorks. Spatially accurate and validated datasets of asset and track centrelines are a key enabler for critical internal projects at ARTC. This includes the deployment of ARTC’s electronic track worker system or Electronic Track Access (eTAP). www.infrastructuremagazine.com.au
