A holistic modelling framework for railway infrastructure asset management

Increasing competition from alternative modes of transport and economic stimulus forces the railway industry to improve service performance and reduce expenditure. Without effective management of infrastructure assets these goals would be difficult to achieve. Delivery of inspection, maintenance, renewal and enhancement activities needs to be effective in order to achieve better performance with the best use of available resources. Modelling tools are being used increasingly to support the development of effective asset management strategies and to make better informed decisions. This paper presents a new modelling framework for developing holistic system-wide models for assessment and optimisation of asset management strategies. The framework has a hierarchical modular structure with individual asset models representing the lowest hierarchical level. By using these models as building blocks infrastructure models at various levels of complexity are constructed. All the models are developed using the Petri Net method. The framework when combined with an optimisation algorithm through future development can be used as a stand-alone asset management decision making tool.