A smart railcar prototype for Dangerous Good transportation

Dangerous Good (DG) transportation constitutes a significant economic activity, which moved in 2011 more than 252.000 thousand of tonnes in Europe. In the EU-28 in 2012, 36 accidents occurred involving the transport of dangerous goods. In this paper the authors describe the architecture and the functionalities of a prototype to monitor in real time a railcar dedicated to Dangerous Good Transport (DGT). Improve rail safety and security with accurate monitoring of railcar, speed, and other shipment conditions is the main issues in DG rail transportation. This paper presents the implementation and the realization of a hardware and software systems to monitor in real time railway rolling stock for DG transport. The prototype consists of two main components: the hardware system which represents the railcar and a sensor network able to monitor the different status of each component of the vehicle; a web GIS software module able to visualize in real time the data of the simulations realized by the system. Special attention has been given to the choice of the On-Board Unit (OBU). This project, in fact, represents the first experience in the real time DG railcar monitoring system implemented by an open-source OBU that guarantees highly flexibility and the possibility to customize the technological solutions. The main objective of this application is the adoption of technical and functional innovative technologies to manage different subsystems in order to improve safety and security in the DG transport by rail.