RAIL SURVEYING
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.
A
ccurate 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 be- ginning a closer partnership with Network Rail, which it says will help railway work- ers do their jobs better.
Shirley Clark, who works on infrastructure for Ordnance Survey, told RTM: “In the past, we’ve not been involved with Net- work 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 tak- ing 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 Ord- nance Survey met the GIS (geographic in- formation systems) team at Network Rail.
Above: Using Ordnance Survey data to determine which households need to get letters about a project.
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 work- shops to get them to better understand how the data can be used, what other data they need to assist them achieve better manage- ment and planning. There’s a lot of work
USING ADDRESS DATA
The image (above) shows an example of a letter drop for initial Crossrail work in Acton. A buffer was cre- ated around the railway, and the list was exported and added to a mail merge. In this instance Net- work Rail did not receive any further contact from line-side neighbours. Most enquiries regarding work taking place are from line-side neighbours who have not received notification and want to find out what is taking place and why.
Not only does this allow Network Rail to make peo- ple aware of the reasons behind work, but it helps to reduce the impact of the work as line-side neigh- bours can be prepared for potential noise distur- bance. The data is also used to supply letter/leaflet drops to inform communities about Network Rail’s major projects.
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 de- volved 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 compa- nies, the TOCs, and someone quite senior from Network Rail. It will cover what Net- work 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.
rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 12 | 73
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