Sharpening the Accuracy of Rail Infrastructure Surveying with Drone Inspections

Creating a “Digital Railway”

One of the major challenges that railway networks are facing is prevention of failures in railway tracks. The task of inspecting thousands of miles of tracks stretching across the land, especially with drone infrastructure inspection, must be performed with speed, efficiency and safety to avoid risk and traffic interference.

An innovative methodology of inspection is by creating a “digital railway” – an accurate and dynamic visualization tool, for fast and accurate potential damage identification, enabling professionals to take informed decisions while planning and prioritizing rail development, maintenance, repairs and renewal projects.

Recently, the use of drone-based platforms in the aerial imaging market is increasing rapidly, and remote sensing is becoming a preferred method for acquiring qualitative aerial data. These platforms offer easy and safe aerial access to challenging areas, a larger surface coverage in a single flight, higher resolution images, and efficient, cost-effective aerial data acquisition.

Plowman Craven is a measurement survey company that specializes in providing laser scanning, surveying, and measurement data services, to both public and private sectors. Having spent many years conducting railway track surveys for Network Rail, and recently created a world-first technical solution for Cross rail, Plowman Craven’s Rail team spent more than two years researching whether the drone surveying and inspection capabilities used for buildings surveys, rooftops and landscapes, could be applied to the rail environment.