Rail transport faces huge present and future challenges for which innovation and step changes are necessary. As UIC’s overall mission is to promote an increased use of rail transport at world level and to help members to make rail transport more attractive, effective, sustainable and economically viable, the General Assemblies have brought their strong support to the ambitious programme of UIC’s International Railway Research Board (IRRB), as well as its initiative to set up the UIC Rail Research & Innovation Awards. The 3rd edition of the Awards concluded with the organisation of the Award ceremony held in St Petersburg in Russia on 1 December 2016.

Through these Awards, the UIC aims to support and promote:

• The development of theoretical, experimental and applied research in railway transport
• The development process of international cooperation in this field
• The promotion and attraction of leading experts from different countries, research institutes, universities, railway operators, infrastructure managers, railway suppliers, passenger transport organizations, governmental bodies in charge of transport and individual researches to address the most important problems and challenges of modern railways
• The global recognition of role of single researchers and research groups in order to establish rail as the sustainable backbone of the transportation system which is cost-efficient, reliable, safe and secure and therefore will become the mode of choice for passengers and freight forwarders

As well as to:

• Support and encourage gifted young researchers, stimulate their research work in the sphere of railway transport, prepare a new generation of researchers, lay the foundations for future innovative development of railway transport and attract young researchers in the sphere of railway transport as well as to support the creation of favorable conditions for scientific discoveries and innovative achievements involving young researchers
• Honour those people who have spent their lifetime trying to innovate and improve the railway system and its services – the Lifetime Achievement Award

Following the previous articles in the series of 2016 Awards we now present you with some information on Mr Jong Un Won, the UIC Global Rail Research & Innovation Award winner in the category of Freight and his development of the IoT (Internet of Things) based real time freight cars and hazardous freight monitoring systems.

UIC Global Rail Research & Innovation Awards – Rail Freight Award Winner 2016

Jong Un Won (juwon at krri.re.kr) was born in 1972 and holds the position of Principal Researcher at the Logistics System Research Division of the Korea Railroad Research Institute - KRRI. He has among other things developed an IoT based Freight train management system, has researched the international freight management based on IT(e-seal etc.) as well as the Vision based Picking system by Augmented Reality, established the concept ubiquitous-rail system in Korea, researched the RFID Field test in postal environment, designed RFID postal pallet management system and planned the strategy for adapting RFID to Postal system.

IoT (Internet of Things) based real time freight cars and hazardous freight monitoring system

(KRRI has developed a real-time freight car and hazardous freight monitoring system by applying IoT (Internet of Things) technologies. The IoT monitoring system can track down the location and overall status of freight cars. The system consists of two major components as follows: 1. Inter-car network installed on each monitored freight car, identifying the location and connection sequence of cars and 2. Intra-car network, displaying status of each freight car, such as break units, the weight and the valve status.

The system continuously monitors the motion of freight car and the status of break units through the mounted Long Range (LoRa) and LTE-m networks and GPS. These data are analysed through RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety) analysis, thus enable the condition based maintenance to decrease the total costs of maintenance while increasing reliability and safety. We have introduced the following Innovations: 1. Organisational Process Innovation: information sharing becomes more transparent as sensor data are collected and freight cars are continuously monitored 2. Rail Sector Maintenance Workforce Management: analysing of big data collected from the monitoring system by which failure and reliability functions work out, enabling prediction of possible equipment failures leading to reliability-centered maintenance, also setting criteria and facilitating to plan maintenance workforce, increasing availability and maintainability. 3. Organisational Process Enhancement through Quality Manual: includes flexible quality manuals, check lists and requirements-responsibility manual. 4. Efficient and Effective Rail Transportation Involved Supply Chain Management: Through coordination with IoT monitoring system on warehouses, trucks and ships, operators can obtain real time status of cargo freight and vehicles. The research can be applied in tracking hazardous materials or cargo freight from departure to destination in longitudinal supply chain. These impacts enable retailers to help operate efficient and effective supply chain management.