GIS Initiative in Indian Railways

S. S. MathurGeneral Manager (Corporate

Coordination) Centre for Railway Information Systems

Need for a GIS system

• Indian Railways is a geographically distributed organization

• Assets are spread across the country• Assets are of three types

– Fixed assets, distributed: railway track, overhead electrified lines

– Fixed assets, location-specific: stations, yards– Moving assets: locomotives, coaches, wagons,

track machines

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Need for GIS (cont’d)• GIS makes it easy to

visualize different inputs and outputs from applications

• It simplifies the management of geographically distributed assets

• IR’s Long Range Decision Support System (LRDSS) uses it

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Base map

• To be developed using Survey of India topographic sheets, enhanced and updated

• To contain commonly mapped features such as land use, rivers, built up areas, roads, bridges, railway lines, police stations, etc.

• Would interface with different applications to utilize the map interface

• To facilitate input as well as depict output from different applicatinos

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First phase

• Develop a layer showing all land owned by Indian Railways– Enhance and update base map through satellite

imagery wherever required– Digitize existing Railway land records– Provide a layer for Railway-owned land

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Subsequent layers

• Fixed infrastructure– Track, Bridges – Cuttings and embankments, tunnels– Overhead Electrical equipment– Buildings -- stations, control offices, etc.– Yards

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Subsequent phases

• Location of maintenance facilities• Movement of trains• Level crossings• Hospitals and medical facilities• Accident relief medical equipment• Accident relief trains• Civil administration – police stations, district administration, disaster management authority

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Interfacing GIS with applications

• Asset management systems for asset location• Train operations management systems for

train running position• Planning systems to visualize system

bottlenecks• Project management systems to visualize

project progress

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Ticketing and Passenger Services

PRS (Passenger Reservation System), UTS (Unreserved Ticketing System), NTES (National Train Enquiry System), RBS (Rates Branch System), IR-Portal , Kolkata Metro Ticketing System, Webclaims (Claims and refunds),

Operations

FOIS (Freight Operations Information System), ICMS (Integrated Coaching Mgt System), COA (Control Office Automation System), CMS (Crew Mgt System), IREPG (E-payment Gateway), Satsang (Software aided Train Scheduling), FOIS – DW (FOIS Data Warehouse), RFMS (Referential File Management System)

Asset management

ICMS-CMM (Coaching Maintenance System), LMS (Locomotive Mgt System), WISE (Workshop Management System), FOIS – FMM, ERP-ICF (ERP system for ICF), TMS (Track Mgt System), Wayside detection systems, Automatic Wagon Tracking,

Resource Management

EPS (E-procurement system), MMIS (Material Management Information System, HRMS (Human Resources Management System), HMIS (Health Management Information System)

Infrastructure EMS (Enterprise Management System), PRS-DR (Disaster Management System for PRS), DR Datacentre for IR

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Indian Railways Information Architecture

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Challenges

• Base map?– IR’s area coverage is very high– Survey of India maps would need to be updated

• Scale / resolution versus cost?• Collection of data?

– A mammoth task

• Expertise to manage GIS system?– Dedicated team to be established

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Approach followed

• Focus area mapping– Satellite data– Ground surveys

• Cross functional team from concerned departments– Identification of features– Identification of attributes– Source of data– Building up the database

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Architecture

• Central database• Exposing map on the Internet / intranet• Using web services to provide interfaces with

the different applications• System for updation of data and configuration

control of the database• Access control

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Thank you

S S MathurGM (CC)

Centre for Railway Information Systemsssmathur@cris.org.in