Innovative track behavioural model estimating risk of incidents

Nowadays, track management must deal with the ever growing demand to increase track availability and reliability, to maintain the highest level of safety, and at the same time, to decrease expenditures for maintenance and renewal activities (M&R). Effective track management can be achieved by implementing new technologies, materials and skills. Also, modern track management depends on behavioural models for the estimation of infrastructural conditions. The models provide a solid base for implementing "what-if" analysis and for risk calculation and optimization. This paper describes a new behavioural model developed by ARCADIS, along with a real case result. The model uses track-condition data and user performance requirements as input. The model is used for simulation and estimation of the infrastructural conditions (system states) for different scenarios. The results, information about critical locations, are used for an optimization process with the objective to minimize risk and cost.