Anita Soni

Awarded VEIV EngD

The Thameslink Project involves a £5 billion upgrade of a major railway line through Central London. The protection of existing buildings and activities as well as major transport infrastructure hubs is essential to making such developments sustainable as transport solutions. Anita Soni researches key issues for the application of new spatial measurement techniques including the accuracy and precision achievable, handling the data volumes generated and the ability to rapidly analyse and communicate results. This work will be accomplished by investigating a selection of current railway monitoring situations and to segment their existing instrumentation with new technologies

Advances in survey techniques, particularly with laser scanning and photogrammetry, offer the possibility to remotely capture vast amounts of data quickly without the need of direct surface contact. This could significantly reduce the costs and time expenses, as well as safety issues currently involved. In parallel new visualisation and mixed reality computing technologies offer the potential for rapid on-site confirmation of changes rather than the numeric feedback of current techniques.

My project will look into key issues for the application of new spatial measurement techniques including the accuracy and precision achievable, handling the data volumes generated and the ability to rapidly analyse and communicate results. This will be done by investigating a selection of current railway monitoring situations and to segment their existing instrumentation with new technologies. Careful design using numerical simulation in combination with real data will allow quantitative and qualitative comparisons of the capabilities of different techniques and lead to the development of best practice for their adoption (including cost/benefit analysis).

Primary Supervisor: Stuart Robson

Industry Sponsor: Network Rail

Enhanced Vision | Information Visualisation for Railways