Advances in the Digital Documentation of Railway Tunnel Inspection

Like other infrastructure, railway tunnels require inspection to ensure their safety and to detect
damages at an early stage, representing a major challenge for those involved. Thus, in addition
to the inspection, the tunnel down time can bea major disruption in operation. Under
economic aspects, the inspection itself with all the subsequent work required is very time-
consuming. In the area of rail networks, comprehensive preparations are necessary to be able
to plan track barriers and bypass measures accordingly to minimise any undue influence on
availability. This paper presents the resultsof an initial test phase of using a digital
documentation solution in order to generatea rapid localisation and a corresponding time
advantage when carrying out the inspection activities. By offering the use of a multitude of
bases, a standardisation of damage patterns is carried out and a collaborative cooperation of
multiple inspection personnel is possible. Depending on the data stock, digitised as-built
models in the form of a plan, digital plan documents and existing or generated digital twins
can be used. Thus, making it possible to locatethe damages already in the course of the
inspection and therefore enable a comprehensible documentation of the inspection activity
and an automated generation of inspection reports.
In the course of a series of field tests along four tunnels of the Tauern Line of the Austrian
Federal Railways, the digital procedure was validated in form of a pilot project. Within this
paper the first results, together with the advantages of a digital inspection are presented.