Decision Support System for Railway Track Maintenance and Renewal Management

This paper describes a decision support system approach for railway track maintenance and renewal management system to analyze the track components and to suggest methods for helping the track managers and engineers decide when maintenance is necessary and when is the best time for renewal. In this study, interviews with track maintenance experts, a national survey, and a comprehensive literature survey were used to develop the proposed decision support system. The developed decision support system includes some decision rules. On the basis of these decision rules, the analyses were realized into some stages: first stage, second stage, coherence stage, optimization stage, and evaluation stage. The developed system analyzed the track with its rich database including decision rules developed by the track specialist professionals and finally successful results were obtained. The developed decision support system proved that it is possible to develop planned maintenance and renewal management systems by using advanced computer and measuring systems instead of corrective maintenance and renewal.