Interviews

Mapping the future

Shirley Clark of Ordnance Survey discusses the organisation’s closer relationship with Network Rail, and the many ways in which smart use of geographic data helps the rail industry.

Accurate topographical information is obviously vital for those working in civils and construction on railway projects, but it is also a key tool for asset managers and maintenance teams.

Ordnance Survey is in the process of beginning a closer partnership with Network Rail, which it says will help railway workers do their jobs better.

Shirley Clark, who works on infrastructure for Ordnance Survey, told RTM: “In the past, we’ve not been involved with Network Rail at a hugely integrated level, but we’re now working much more closely with them.

“That will help Network Rail in a number of ways, for example in its future asset management, which is very important – we’re quite involved with that and it’s taking up a lot of time.

“It’s important that we get much closer to them, and it’s helping us to understand how they work, and how they need to use the Ordnance Survey data.”

In late December, for example, Clark and one of her technical colleagues at Ordnance Survey met the GIS (geographic information systems) team at Network Rail. She said: “That was to look at how they are currently using the data, any issues they’re having with it, what they would like in the future, and how we could help them.

“One of the things that came out of that meeting is that we will run some workshops to get them to better understand how the data can be used, what other data they need to assist them achieve better management and planning. There’s a lot of work going on now, and quite a lot of my time in the last few months has been focused on our work with Network Rail.”

Devolution

“We’ve also been working with the 10 devolved companies based on the Network Rail routes,” Clark added. “We’ve spoken to ATOC about this, because they obviously have an overriding interest in what’s going to happen with the 10 devolved companies and the train operators themselves, so we plan to have a workshop that ATOC will host. It will involve the devolved companies, the TOCs, and someone quite senior from Network Rail. It will cover what Network Rail are planning to do, how they’re going to do it, and how they can use data to communicate.”

The engineers and staff working under the new devolved route structure will still have to communicate and co-ordinate with Network Rail centrally, and Clark says that Ordnance Survey’s topography data is an ideal way of doing so.

She said: “It works just like a big database, so people can attach information to various assets. It is a database – not just a map. It covers all the features on the ground and has the ability for people to attach information.

If you have a particular, say, signal box, you can attach all sorts of information to it: maintenance information, where there’s been faults, any kind of changes that need to made.

“That can be attached, and the complete file passed onwards to someone else with the same footprint. It’s a very accurate way to communicate between Network Rail centrally, the devolved companies, and the TOCs, as they too need to understand what work is going on, what role they play in it, and how they can get involved. They will have a much closer relationship with Network Rail’s local devolved companies in the future.”

Most of Network Rail’s ‘maps’ are based on its generic systems at the moment, which it hopes to integrate using Ordnance Survey. Especially important for those in the rail industry is the OS MasterMap Topography Layer.

Clark said: “That’s our highest level of accuracy. It’s intelligent data, not just a dumb picture.”

Leaves on the line

Another aspect of survey data that comes in particularly useful for railway maintenance is using it to monitor encroaching vegetation and trees overhanging the line.

Clark explained: “They have our imagery layer, and our imagery layer is orthorectified, which means it fits exactly over the topography layer.

“Normally, if you take pictures and try to overlay them, then because of the curvature of the earth it wouldn’t fit on top – you couldn’t put, say, Google Maps over topography because it doesn’t match, but ours matches perfectly.

“That means Network Rail can see areas where there is lots of vegetation at the side of the line and where there are trees, and maintenance can be planned around it.”

Addressing the issue

Another use of the data is in keeping residents informed about upcoming and ongoing engineering and construction works (see box-out).

Network Rail has been particularly keen to do this, and its commercial team has instituted a process whereby Ordnance Survey address data is overlaid on top of the to topography data, which makes it far easier to work out which households need to be contacted to be informed about noisy or disruptive works.

Effective use of this process has cut down complaints to Network Rail, Clark said, adding: “People tend to feel better about a project when they are informed properly about it.”

Of course, Network Rail and its contractors are also responsible for some major changes to the landscape itself, and there are arrangements in place for it to notify Ordnance Survey when it makes changes to the nation’s topography.

Clark said: “We have arrangements with a number of organisations whereby we take their data when they’ve made changes to the landscape, and that’s integrated into ours. There is a process for us to do that, because we have to establish a high level of accuracy, and checks are made.”

Tell us what you think – have your say below, or email us directly at [email protected]