A White Paper on Intelligent Infrastructure Concepts

Transcription

1 A White Paper on Intelligent Infrastructure Concepts

2 The UK has an extensive transport infrastructure. Government figures indicate that we currently have: 724,000 km of road lanes and 16,600 km of railway track. As a nation, we travel approximately 500 billion km by road per year and 50 billion km by rail. We invest around 8 billions a year to maintain and develop the infrastructure for transport. Investments we make now will be with us for the next years, possibly longer. As we make those investment decisions, we face a number of challenging aims. We need infrastructure that will: meet a growing demand for transport support economic growth be environmentally sustainable meet the wider needs of all elements of society accommodate future uncertainties be safe and resistant to shocks. The introduction of an intelligent infrastructure across rail and road networks providing self monitoring assets is set to make a major improvement in overall business performance and the delivery of world class rail and road infrastructures. Information, and its collection and management, is at the heart of the development of an intelligent infrastructure. Sensors and other technologies may be built into infrastructure to deliver intelligence about infrastructure performance. There are significant benefits in collecting and processing such information so that travellers, operators and owners can make better use of the infrastructure. We face many uncertainties in the future that would affect the best way to use intelligence in our infrastructure. However, it is clear from all the situations considered that, to achieve these aims, we need: a system that can provide intelligence, with sensors and data mining techniques to provide information to support the decisions of individuals and service providers infrastructure that is intelligent, that can process the vast amounts of information we collect and can then adapt in real time to provide the most effective services. We need to know where everything is on the system so that, when assets break, we can organize effective support and we can move system users around in the most efficient way to create the space for a repair to be carried out. Intelligence in the infrastructure allows us to provide an integrated transport system with seamless interchanges. As individuals, intelligence required to support the effective management of any infrastructure environment is both complex and constantly changing. The effective use of application of information and communications technologies (ICT) is the most effective way of gathering and processing the data currently available from the emerging intelligent infrastructure products.

3 Using Technology Bringing together complex systems raises a number of issues where software can play an important role. Software could, for example, help to anticipate unusual behaviour that can develop when complex systems interact. Software is used to detect signs of instability in complex systems and can be developed to provide an ability to alert or stabilise the system when emergent behaviour could lead to failure. Systems that are causing problems can be shutdown and operators alerted to break reinforcing loops that could cause damage. It is essential to design infrastructure for intelligence. An infrastructure system can be intelligent only if it contains the ability to gather data about its own performance and to inform owners, operators and users. That information then allows users to make intelligent decisions. We must also design intelligence into infrastructure. For example, autonomous systems that respond to environmental and usage issues to optimise the use of the network and improve the safety of transport. Many of the components of an Intelligent Infrastructure System are already coming into use. Mobile telephones, global positioning systems (GPS) and the Internet, for example, enable intelligence to be automatically transmitted to users seamlessly providing information as to the infrastructure performance, what remedial action is required and where it needs to be delivered. Reliability Centered Maintenance The final link in the cognitive chain, after we have turned data into information, is to derive knowledge from that information. At the moment, it takes human intervention to complete this transformation. Intelligent Infrastructure systems will allow such knowledge to be generated and actioned automatically. Reliability Centered Maintenance then becomes a key feature in exploiting the information derived from intelligent infrastructure and a key tool for infrastructure management to maximize the use of the asset while ensuring the safety of the public and operators. RCM is a process and has introduced a range of concepts in the way maintenance regimes are developed and how these are used for the maintenance of Intelligent Infrastructures. The use of RCM in maintaining intelligent assets is illustrated in figure 1.

4 Intelligent Infrastructure Asset Asset Failure Management Pre-emptive Fault Management Condition Based Database Unplanned/planned Maintenance intervention Reliability Centred Maintenance Figure 1 RCM in Intelligent Asset Management The issues raised by RCM have tremendous implications for asset management in infrastructure industries particularly where they rely on time based methods of maintenance. Recent work on failure modes show that: many of the maintenance tasks that are in place today may not be contributing to the performance requirements that companies have for their physical assets many of the maintenance tasks that are in place may be actively counter- productive. many of the equipment failures types may have no maintenance strategies in place to manage the consequences of failure. RCM provides a means of evaluating the optimum maintenance regime for individual assets by:

5 Defining the functions, performance standards and expectations of the equipment in its operating context Defining all the failed states that can prevent the equipment from achieving its functional expectations Defining the causes of each of these failed states Defining the effects of each of failures causing a failed state Determining the consequences of each failure causing a failed state Determining what maintenance intervention strategies are able to adequately manage failures causing a failed state Defining what should be done if there are no intervention strategies that are able to adequately manage failures causing a failed state. RCM fits within the virtuous circle for the maintenance of intelligent assets as illustrated in figure 2. Virtuous Cycle of an Intelligent Infrastructure Asset Acceptable Performance Criteria Yes Accurate Data Collection No Planned Maintenance Response Infrastructure Maintenance Review Infrastructure Performance Data Figure 2 The Virtuous Maintenance Circle

6 In conclusion, since we require infrastructure assets to be virtually in constant use, new ways of delivering essentials maintenance and support is required. From intelligent infrastructure vast amounts of data will be available to provide the basis of new and innovative delivery of support to our infrastructure. Because of the volumes of data involved the only practical way of analysing this is through IT that can help provide models and comparisons to current events. Currently the software that creates this environment is disjointed; RTS Solutions has provided the capability for organisations to overcome this problem by creating the bridges which can connect assets to databases to IT tools to provide solutions. In addition RTS Solutions also supply Real Time support to maintenance units and control centres to ensure the catastrophic failures are deal with, and data captured, as well as carrying out routine maintenance.