NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, NOV 21
Indian Railways is planning to invest Rs 13.5lakh crore in modernizing the infrastructure from the National Infrastructure fund in the next five years and will deploy AI (artificial intelligence) in automating the maintenance processes, a senior official said.
Signal & Telecommunication (S&T) department of Southern Railway organised a webinar under the aegis of IRSTE (Institute of Railway Signal & Telecommunication Southern Railway) Chennai chapter pic.twitter.com/EzlblChfCa
— Southern Railway (@GMSRailway) November 20, 2020
Railway Board Member Signal & Telecommunication Pradeep Kumar said this while speaking at a webinar on “Adoption of Data Sciences – A strategic inflection point for Indian Railway”, organized by the S&T department of Southern Railway under the aegis of IRSTE (Institute of Railway Signal & Telecommunication Southern Railway) Chennai chapter on Friday.
Chief Guest Pradeep Kumar launched the IRSTE, Chennai Chapter website on the public domain. Speaking on the occasion from New Delhi over video conferencing he appreciated the efforts of Southern Railway in absorbing the latest technologies & organising seminars and webinars for the dissemination of knowledge.
“Railways is planning to invest Rs 13.5 Lakh crores in modernizing the infrastructure from the National Infrastructure fund in the next five years. To reduce the load on the maintenance of assets, Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a major role by automating the maintenance processes. As a pilot project already 100 stations across the Indian Railway network have been identified for predictive maintenance of S&T assets. Ten (10) stations in Southern Railway which are on Golden Quadrilateral and Golden Diagonal (GQ & GD) routes are part of this pilot project. These stations are Basin bridge, Korukkupet, Tiruvottiyur, Ennore, Sulurpetta, Nayudupetta, Avadi, Kadambattur, Tiruttani, and Puttur. Unlike the present system of carrying out maintenance in a periodical manner, a predictive maintenance system will continuously monitor the condition of the equipment and generate the required alerts so that need-based maintenance can be carried out. This will result in huge savings in maintenance costs and also reduce asset failures,” Pradeep Kumar said.
John Thomas, General Manager, Southern Railway, Guest of Honour addressed the participants. He highlighted the various achievements of the S&T department of Southern Railway in adopting & applying the latest technologies in day to day working.
Anshul Gupta, Additional Member, Signals informed the gathering about the developments taking place in the field of AI in Indian Railways. He further conveyed that the specification for data acquisition is under deliberation by Railway Board & will be finalized shortly.
In his presidential address, R. Baskaran, Principal Chief, Signal & Telecommunicatio, highlighted the efforts taken by IRSTE, Chennai Chapter in educating the members about the latest technologies.
The full-day webinar had three sessions and a total of 11 papers covering the entire gamut of data analytics & Artificial Intelligence Solutions.
