Project Acronym: PMO-RAIL
Project Title: PMO-RAIL - Predictive Maintenance and Operations in Railway Systems
Manutenção Preditiva e Operações em Sistemas Ferroviários
Responsible @ACMEC: António Ramos Andrade
Participants @IDMEC: Elsa Maria Pires Henriques; João Pedro Marçal Neves Costa; Jorge Alberto Cadete Ambrósio; Mariana De Almeida Costa; Virgínia Isabel Monteiro Nabais Infante
Funding Institution: FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Project Reference: 2022.01738.PTDC
Funding: 50k€
Duration: 24 months starting March 2023

Summary:
The PMO-RAIL project addresses the need for a Collaborative Decision Model (CDM) to improve Maintenance and Operation (M&O) strategies in the Vehicle-Track (V-T) system of European railways. Due to the vertical separation between Train Operating Companies (TOCs) and Infrastructure Managers (IMs), current maintenance decisions are often misaligned, leading to sub-optimal outcomes in terms of cost, safety, and availability. The project proposes a data-driven and cooperative approach to predictive maintenance, with shared models and simulations of wheel-rail interaction.

Key tasks include:

1. Collaborative strategies for track tamping/rail grinding (IM responsibility) and wheelset turning (TOC responsibility).
2. Predictive M&O models tailored to different agents: IMs, TOCs, and – indirectly - final users.
3. Development of digital twins, separate and joint optimisation models, and robust scheduling techniques that consider traffic and user impact.