SNCF Réseau deploys real-time app to detect maintenance faults

SNCF Réseau, in partnership with Capgemini, is deploying an innovative app to optimise its rail network monitoring and improve maintenance.

With the new mobile app, SNCF Réseau’s maintenance teams, in charge of over 30,000 kilometres of track, are alerted and activated in real-time to incidents on the network, with the use of geolocation.

The French infrastructure manager hopes the app will increase its performance and meet the growing demand for mobility. The tool will help to improve the regularity of traffic flows, as well as passenger information.

The remote monitoring of the railway network means any technical failures or faults in the tracks, signalling, catenaries, level crossing or switches are precisely identified. As soon as anomalies are detected, maintenance staff are alerted to them, enabling repairs to be carried out as swiftly as possible.

Real-time data means that information such as travel times, arrival times on site and response times relating to the maintenance issue is instantly accessible to rail operators, who can then provide passengers with the most up-to-date information.

Using the tool across its four supervision centres in the country, it will be possible for SNCF Réseau to build a vision of corrective and conditional maintenance needs on a national scale. More broadly, the manager’s aim is to establish a comprehensive information system on the state of rail infrastructure to assist in decision-making for appropriate maintenance.

“Overall, we are going to move from very systematic maintenance to maintenance that is closer to needs, more precise and in real-time – network maintenance at the right time and in the right place,” commented Olivier Bancel, Deputy Director General Production, SNCF Réseau.

Named ‘New Generation Supervision’, the app has been in use in the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region since 1 July 2020. SNCF Réseau plans to expand its use, progressively implementing the app into other regions between 2021 and 2022.