Resolving railway incidents more efficiently

ProRail resolves dozens of malfunctions and incidents on the railway every day. To do this, the company works closely with transporters, (rail) contractors, and emergency services. As such, up-to-date communication is crucial, both between the cooperating parties and with passengers, locals, and the media. Because all parties involved used to use their own, sometimes outdated, communication tools, it often took a long time for everyone to be aware of the latest developments regarding a malfunction or incident. That is why ProRail approached Geodan for an efficient national information system.

We asked Qognify to join the project: a company with experience in smart incident management. Together, we developed SpoorWeb, based on Qognify's Situator solution, combined with elements of Geodan’s crisis management suite. SpoorWeb alerts relevant parties and immediately calculates the fastest route for incident response teams and emergency services. Moreover, everyone shares all information directly via the system, creates a real-time overview of the situation and the measures implemented. “Every day, the platform demonstrates how much faster we can now act when dealing with incidents," says Martijn van der Weide, incident response manager at ProRail.

Learning from mistakes and organizing processes in an even smarter way is essential for incident management. That’s how ProRail minimizes the impact of incidents. We develop resolution scenarios based on work processes and collected data. The system’s reports and analyses lead to improvements in platform procedures and functionalities, which even lets ProRail and its partners prevent incidents. By combining data collected by smart sensors with historical data, they can see which switches cause many disruptions, for instance, and make sure to carry out preventive maintenance on these switches more frequently. That’s how we contribute to greater safety and punctuality on the Dutch railroads.