Comparative evaluation of methods of monitoring of water objects, potentially dangerous for the railway track

The article discusses the need for timely monitoring of potentially hazardous water objects to prevent emergency situations and improve safety of trains. There are several ways of monitoring, which can be divided into two types: visual (expert personally check potentially dangerous objects and conducts measurements) and remote. If the remote method of investigation involved various technical tools that allow to study the behavior of the object (its geometric characteristics and change over time) without the personal presence of a specialist on it. These tools include the unmanned aerial vehicles: drones, quadcopters, omniopters; pilot aircrafts: light aircraft piloted by a pilot, as well as data obtained by aerial photography and remote sensing of the Earth by satellites. For comparison purposes of the listed methods the following parameters have been chosen: efficiency of data acquisition, possibility of automatic integration into the computer, accuracy of measurements, equipment cost, the detailed assessment of the studied site according to the available data, need of presence of the specialist at measurements, data acquisition in real time, time for data updating. During monitoring of objects two types of measurements are allocated - during the peak periods and in a daily situation, and the assessment of different methods of monitoring for each of them is executed. At the first evaluation stage a characteristic which is the most significant for this period of monitoring is chosen, which will play a role of “reference point”, at the second stage all other characteristics are arranged on decrease of their importance, proceeding from qualitative (“is more significant - is less significant”) paired comparisons, at the third stage the quantitative assessment of the importance is attributed to each characteristic. The most significant characteristic (“reference point”) receives an assessment “1”, and estimates of the importance of other characteristics are defined in unit shares, proceeding from expert comparison of a significance value of this characteristic with the most significant. After that the total size of an assessment for each method is defined. This approach led to the conclusion of the feasibility of the introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles in the monitoring of water objects which are in close proximity to the railway track. In the short prospect it is possible to offer a combination of use of unmanned aerial vehicles with periodic visual monitoring.

railway track, monitoring of potentially hazardous objects, comparable assessment of monitoring methods, application of pilot and unmanned aerial vehicles, aerial photo and video shooting, satellite technologies

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