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ACHILLES: reducing infrastructure whole-life costs

ACHILLES: reducing infrastructure whole-life costs
ACHILLES: reducing infrastructure whole-life costs
The ACHILLES research programme is a collaboration between six UK universities and the British Geological Survey, which aims to provide the tools to “assess, monitor, design and repair the performance of the ground” upon which infrastructure depends, to ensure that rail and other linear infrastructure provides “consistent, affordable and safe services, underpinned by intelligent design, management and maintenance.”
The research programme addresses three main challenges: (i) improved understanding of material and asset deterioration processes; (ii) improved understanding of asset performance, with and without interventions; and (iii) improved forecasting of asset and network behaviour, and decision support for interventions, identifying best-value intervention strategies. These challenges are met through four complementary workstreams: (i) Performance and Deterioration (PaD); (ii) Monitoring and Measurement (MaM); (iii) Simulation and Modelling (SaM); and (iv) Design and Decisions (DaD).
This paper is focussed on the SaM and, especially, DaD workstreams. It describes the development of decision support to identify the earthworks maintenance and renewal strategies, and select the designs required, to reduce and ideally minimise the whole-life costs of individual assets, routes and networks. The work is based initially upon cuttings on Britain’s Great Western Main Line railway between London and Bristol, whose individual and collective whole-life costs are being analysed to develop a route-level whole-life engineering cost model. The workstreams then extend to include the handling of uncertainty, environmental and passenger and freight end-user impacts, and the costs and potential benefits of additional asset condition data.
Armstrong, John
5fafa91e-39c1-4d1d-a331-564558aaa638
Preston, John
ef81c42e-c896-4768-92d1-052662037f0b
Helm, P.R.
1faf99e9-184c-4034-acc2-fad6114ea54e
Svalova, A
437c712c-79b7-4437-abf5-ef5358ac409b
Armstrong, John
5fafa91e-39c1-4d1d-a331-564558aaa638
Preston, John
ef81c42e-c896-4768-92d1-052662037f0b
Helm, P.R.
1faf99e9-184c-4034-acc2-fad6114ea54e
Svalova, A
437c712c-79b7-4437-abf5-ef5358ac409b

Armstrong, John, Preston, John, Helm, P.R. and Svalova, A (2023) ACHILLES: reducing infrastructure whole-life costs. In Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis. 16 pp .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

The ACHILLES research programme is a collaboration between six UK universities and the British Geological Survey, which aims to provide the tools to “assess, monitor, design and repair the performance of the ground” upon which infrastructure depends, to ensure that rail and other linear infrastructure provides “consistent, affordable and safe services, underpinned by intelligent design, management and maintenance.”
The research programme addresses three main challenges: (i) improved understanding of material and asset deterioration processes; (ii) improved understanding of asset performance, with and without interventions; and (iii) improved forecasting of asset and network behaviour, and decision support for interventions, identifying best-value intervention strategies. These challenges are met through four complementary workstreams: (i) Performance and Deterioration (PaD); (ii) Monitoring and Measurement (MaM); (iii) Simulation and Modelling (SaM); and (iv) Design and Decisions (DaD).
This paper is focussed on the SaM and, especially, DaD workstreams. It describes the development of decision support to identify the earthworks maintenance and renewal strategies, and select the designs required, to reduce and ideally minimise the whole-life costs of individual assets, routes and networks. The work is based initially upon cuttings on Britain’s Great Western Main Line railway between London and Bristol, whose individual and collective whole-life costs are being analysed to develop a route-level whole-life engineering cost model. The workstreams then extend to include the handling of uncertainty, environmental and passenger and freight end-user impacts, and the costs and potential benefits of additional asset condition data.

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Published date: April 2023

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 475726
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475726
PURE UUID: 48912fdc-1334-4ec5-a6fc-444387759aca
ORCID for John Armstrong: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2648-6307
ORCID for John Preston: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6866-049X

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Date deposited: 27 Mar 2023 16:34
Last modified: 11 May 2024 01:40

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Contributors

Author: John Armstrong ORCID iD
Author: John Preston ORCID iD
Author: P.R. Helm
Author: A Svalova

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