SafeRail Project" 2004-2008

STS Ltd has recently completed a four year EC funded Research Project to develop an “Innovative Ground Penetrating Radar System for Fast and Efficient Monitoring of Rail Track Substructure Condition”.  Research consortium partners included D’Appolonia S.p.A, University of Pavia, Mer-Mec S.p.A (Italy), Mala Geoscience Ab (Sweden), BAM (Germany), BRE Ltd.(UK), G-Impuls Praha (Czech Republic). Full details of this project can be seen at www.saferail-project.eu.

The SAFE-RAIL project objective is to develop an innovative GPR system for fast and efficient monitoring of rail track substructure conditions, based on:

A new concept of railtrack substructure monitoring radar based on

innovative antennas and hardware technologies optimised for operation on-board fast diagnostic trains;

Innovative data interpretation and analysis tools based on expert systems and neural networks providing on-field

information in user-friendly way, allowing monitoring of the conditions of rail tracks directly on-site during construction

and maintenance works;

Information technology based tools for the networked exploitation of multiple diagnostic systems moving on the rail

network and the joint interpretation of multi-temporal diagnostic data.

This project is the latest in a series of EU funded consortium research programmes for the development of Subsurface/ Ground Penetrating Radar technology that STS Ltd. has carried out. Previous projects involved “Subsurface Radar as a Tool for Non-Destructive Testing and Assessment in the Construction and Building Industries” and “Smart-Rad, The Development of an Innovative Ground Penetrating Radar System for the Recognition and Identification of Subsurface Buried Objects.”