IN2RAIL is to set the foundations for a resilient, consistent, cost-efficient, high capacity European network by delivering important building blocks that unlock the innovation potential that exists in SHIFT2RAIL: innovative technologies will be explored and resulting concepts embedded in a systems framework where infrastructure, information management, maintenance techniques, energy, and engineering are integrated, optimised, shared and exploited. IN2RAIL will make advances towards SHIFT2RAIL objectives: enhancing the existing capacity fulfilling user demand; increasing the reliability delivering better and consistent quality of service; reducing the LCC increasing competitiveness of the EU rail system. To achieve the above, a holistic approach covering Smart Infrastructures, Intelligent Mobility Management (I2M)and Rail Power Supply and Energy Management will be applied. Smart Infrastructure addresses the fundamental design of critical assets - switches and crossings and tracks. It will research components capable of meeting future railway demands and will utilise modern technologies in the process. Risk and condition-based LEAN approaches to optimise RAMS and LCC in asset maintenance activities will be created to tackle the root causes of degradation. I2M researches automated, interoperable and inter-connected advanced traffic management systems; scalable and upgradable systems, utilising standardised products and interfaces, enabling easy migration from legacy systems; the wealth of data and information on assets and traffic status; information management systems adding the capability of nowcasting and forecasting of critical asset statuses. Rail Power Supply and Energy Management create solutions to improve the energy performance of the railway system. Research on new power systems characterised by reduced losses and capable of balancing energy demands, along with innovative energy management systems enabling accurate and precise estimates of energy flows.

The predicted growth of transport, especially in European railway infrastructures, is expected to introduce a dramatic increase in freight and passenger services by the end of 2050. To support sustainable development of these infrastructures, novel data-driven ICT solutions are required. These will enable monitoring, analysis and exploitation of energy and asset information for the entire railway system including power grid, stations, rolling stock and infrastructure. IN2DREAMS will address these challenges through two distinct work streams: WS1, focusing on the management of energy-related data and WS2, focusing on the management of asset-related data. IN2DREAMS will develop and demonstrate a modular cloud-based open data management platform (ODM) facilitating ubiquitous support of both energy and asset services. WS1 will provide energy metering services through a dynamically reconfigurable platform offering improved reliability, ease of monitoring and on-the-fly optimisation for the entire railway system. This will include a heterogeneous secure and resilient telecommunication platform comprising both wireless and wireline technologies converging energy and telecom services. This infrastructure will interconnect a plethora of monitoring devices and end-users to the railway control centre and will include an ODM platform for data collection, aggregation and analysis, able to scale with the railway operators needs. This platform will be non-intrusive exploiting advanced signal processing and intelligent learning algorithms. Within WS2, IN2DREAMS will concentrate on defining IT solutions and methodologies for business-secure decision support in the field of data processing and analytics for railway asset management. The general aim is to study and proof the application of smart contracts in the railway ecosystems, by addressing also legal and regulatory implications, and advanced visual and rule-based data analytics, including metrics for performance assessment.