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Towards a Railway Infrastructure Digital Twin Framework for African Railway Lifecycle Management

2024; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-39619-9_8

2195-4364

Daniël N. Wilke, D. J. Fourie, P.J. Gräbe,

Transport and Logistics Innovations

Africa has 82,000 km of railway lines of which around 68,000 km are operational (est. 2007). South Africa accounts for a quarter of Africa's operational railway lines which moves 63% of Africa's railway freight by mass (est. 2007). In South Africa, freight railway lines are managed by Transnet, where freight is the main driver for Transnet's growth. Transnet's freight is currently centered around two lines, namely, the 861 km Sishen-Saldanha iron-ore line and the 621 km coal system linking Mpumalanga mines with the Richards Bay port which account for 60% of Transnet's freight (Transnet SOC Ltd © LTPF (2016) Chapter 3). South Africa's railway network is in rapid decline with freight transport declining by 25% over the last five years. For the financial year 2021–2022, the transported freight was merely 172.7 mt, a decline of 10 mt from 2007 and a decline of 54 mt from the peak in 2015. The welfare of South Africa's railway infrastructure is critical for the world as South Africa stores 75% of the world's known manganese used in stainless steel production. Maintaining an aged and declining railway network within a resource-constrained environment requires careful planning and prioritization of maintenance tasks. To support the management of Transnet's railway infrastructure, we are developing a railway infrastructure performance digital twin. The performance digital twin is being designed for real-time assessment of the state of the railway infrastructure as well as the translation thereof in identifying and prioritizing maintenance tasks. Given available resources, utilization, and transport risks the digital twin will be able to inform maintenance schedules and maintenance decision-making. Only limited digital twin instances for railway infrastructure have been realized mainly within a first-world context.