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TrackWater
The rail network relies on an extensive system of trackside drains to remove surface water and minimise the risk of flooding and damage to the network. Failure to maintain the drainage infrastructure can have significant cost and safety implications for the parent asset; such as delay minutes, poor track geometry, line closures and the likelihood of earthwork failures.The project's focus is on improving the performance of the rail infrastructure's drainage system - a critical, yet often overlooked element of the network infrastructure in order to help "design, build and operate railway infrastructure at reduced cost".
Our approach is to leverage previous work on an innovative self-learning system for maintaining drainage networks in the highways sector and adapt this technology – including the IoT sensor network, data models and decision support system - for use in the rail sector. This represents a major advance in the state of the art as it will address key challenges identified by Network Rail and enable proactive maintenance of trackside drainage assets. Our consortium includes Network Rail as a challenge owner, InTouch Ltd as a technology supplier and primary route to market, and a strong science base consisting of the Transport Systems Catapult and Lancaster University. The resulting system will be tested on 11 miles of Network Rail test track.
To learn more about how TrackWater works, watch our video.
Smart Clean
The project aimed to assess the feasibility of using environmental and IoT highways data to minimise the environmental impact caused by pollutants from the highways entering into the UK’s waterways. Moreover, we set out to research whether reducing contaminants in highways run off could help the UK in meeting EU legislation which is due to impact by 2020. Not meeting these targets could lead to potential fines of £1m per day where waterbodies do not meet certain standards.
The project manually sampled and analysed 300 gully contents in Redcar and Cleveland and assessed these for priority hazardous substances. The project was able to identify trends based on this small number which indicated a much larger impact on the waterways. Watch our animated video to learn more about Smart Clean
Smart Clean 2
The project aims to bring both the feasibility study and the GAMMA project together to create one solution capable of predicting both flooding and contaminants on the highways. Smart Clean involves taking over 3000 manual samples from the Bristol area, installing sensors in gullies and capturing information on a range of different environmental, social and highways datasets including traffic flow, weather, speed etc. We are creating intelligent models to analyse the data. We aim to generate predictions that will aid decision support tools for councils and contractors managing the network. To learn more about this project you can view our information video for Smart Clean.
GAMMA – Smart Water
As part of the project we trialled our solution within Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council with our partners Carillion, who were contracted to maintain the drainage network.
Sensors were installed within high priority gullies in order to monitor the water and silt levels. These levels could then be modelled against other factors such as weather, foliage, traffic counts and traffic behaviours in order to predict the impact of weather events upon the drainage infrastructure. This information was then used to 'target clean' only those gullies which need it, improving service delivery and bringing cost and efficiency savings to the contract. Currently we are achieving circa 70% accuracy on predictions, these are now being remodelled and improved to provide customers with an improved solution.
Welsh Slate
It was established that the site needed a Talk Through base, however there was no mains electricity available to power the unit. To address this issue we designed and built a solar panel unit which incorporated a Motorola DR3000 digital repeater, two x 80 watt solar panels, 1 solar charging regulator and a 100Ah battery. The Digital system was installed and tested within 6 weeks of the order being placed.
All the coverage issues have been resolved with radio coverage being possible across the whole site. Find out more about how InTouch and Welsh Slate work together.
Smart Streets
The Smart Streets project aimed to demonstrate the potential of the IoT to drive significant innovation in the UK's Highways sector and beyond. By developing an open, interconnected Smart Streets Hub we aimed to create a vibrant, sustainable ecosystem of developers, data stream producers and consumers and validate this with 6 demonstrator applications.
The project ran a series of events including workshops, hackathons and competitions which proved the validity of the IoT in the Highways Maintenance sector. The project also contributed to the creation of HyperCat, a data standard for IoT in industry which has since gone on to become a leading example for the sector.
Watch our animation to find out more about how the Smart Streets Hub works, or to register please follow this link to the Smart Streets Website
Our Travel
The Our Travel project aimed to design and develop the next-generation of travel information systems that would be:
The project leveraged social networking and combined this with alternative information sources from highways, enabling users to make more informed decisions about how and when to travel.
The project outputs included systems that were trialled successfully in both rural and urban areas (Wray, Lancashire and Redcar and Cleveland) as well as during the FutureEverything Festival in Manchester to enable visitors to travel the city, visiting the festival venues effectively.
Faith
The Faith Project was a 3 year part funded collaborative research and development project which ran from 2011 until early 2014. Partners included: Lancaster University and Carillion PLC.The project aimed to understand and develop new trust models for remote workers on the highways by:
The project produced guidance on how to embed trust into digital solutions for the end to end process and all stakeholders. The outputs were trialled within Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, with the ‘FAITH Window’ being set up in public areas to keep everyone informed and build trust within the community.
The FAITH project is seen as one of the most successful innovation projects InTouch has led, and the outputs, findings and trust models have influenced all of our developments and projects involving remote workers since.