Geographic Information System for Railway Management

Geographic Information System for Railway Management

Hazem M. El-Bakry

Faculty of Computer Science & Information Systems,

Mansoura University, EGYPT

E-mail: [email protected]

Wael A. Awad

Faculty of Science, Port Said, Suez

Canal University, EGYPT

Abstract Safety and security and considered a critical issue in railways. Applying geographic information system

(GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) in the railway becomes very important. Web-based GIS makes

it easy to exchange information and create better public communication through the Web site. It helps to

plan for a trip by checking train times, stations and different lines between stations. This is done through

the Web site of the railway organization, which contains maps and databases. Therefore, in this paper, the

presented research work concentrates on using GIS to retrieve any data related to railway. This is done in

real-time at anywhere. Furthermore, it is easy to access information and check its validity through the

Internet. In addition to maintaining infrastructure network information, railway organizations are trying to

use GIS for decision support operations. Because advanced technology provides interoperability support, it

can be used to create a comprehensive railway information system that supports all critical business

processes. Railway organizations make use of GIS and advanced technology to perfectly monitor safety and security.

Because they are responsible for ensuring the safety and security of railway passengers, railway managers

need for rapid response information systems to avoid incidents. The main objective of this research work is

to create an efficient railway GIS that makes trains go automatic without human intervention to avoid

human mistakes that may cause a lot of accidents.

Keywords— GIS, Railway Information System, Information Visualization, Disaster Management.

I. Introduction Railway has long been considered as the safest

transportation media. Recognizing the need to

improve the efficiency of the transportation

systems. The statistics show a huge number of

accidents are due to human errors. Therefore,

having a systematic way for railway operation

management and reduction of human intervention

or controlling activities and performances could

play a significant role in reducing the number and

impact of accidents .

Geographic information systems have emerged in

the last decade as an essential tool for urban and

resource planning and management. Their capacity

to store, retrieve, analyze, model and map large

areas with huge volumes of spatial data has led to

an extraordinary proliferation of applications [1-

25].

GIS allows the creation of maps through

automated mapping, data capture and surveying

analysis tool. It can be used to find out what's

occurring within a set distance of a feature.

Finally, creating maps include precise details

about train crossing and train transfers After

creating maps by GIS, then link these maps to

railways Database.

GIS benefits organizations of all sizes and in

almost every industry. There is a growing interest

in and awareness of the economic and strategic

value of GIS, in part because of more standards-

based technology and greater awareness of the

benefits demonstrated by GIS users. The number

of GIS enterprise solutions and IT strategies that

include GIS are growing rapidly. The benefits of

GIS generally fall into five basic categories

[11,31,36,37,38,40,41,42,43]:

1. Cost savings resulting from greater efficiency.

2. Better decision making.

3. Improved communication.

4. Better geographic information record keeping.

5. Managing geographically.

General purpose GIS performs seven tasks [1-25]:

1. Input of data

2. Map making

3. Manipulation of data

4. File management

5. Query and analysis

6. Visualization of results

ADVANCES in VISUALIZATION, IMAGING and SIMULATION

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These are the steps of GIS Project [59,79]:

1. Identification of Project Objectives

2. Creation of Project Database

3. Data Analysis

4. Presentation of the Results

II. Data Collection In this Section, data collection is split into data

capture (map scanning) and data store (input of

attribute data).

This paper describes the data sources, techniques,

and workflow involved in GIS data collection.

Data collection is a time consuming. Data capture

includes establishing user requirements, garnering

resources. Preparation involves obtaining data,

redrafting poor-quality map sources, editing

scanned map images, removing noise. Documents

are scanned to reduce wear and tear, improve

access, provide integrated database storage, and to

index them geographically.

Data capture:

The process by which data are received from the

real-world (primary source), or from a secondary

source such as a paper map, and fed to GIS

software. Capturing data from primary source is

usually done by using GPS or remote sensing.

While performing this from secondary source is

usually done by scanning and digitizing. The

processes of data collection are also variously

referred to as data capture, data automation, data

conversion, data transfer, data translation, and

digitizing [1-82].

In this research work, data are collected from

paper map. We get this paper map from the base

station located in Tanta, EGYPT. Paper map

consists of stations and base lines between stations

as shown in Fig. 1. There is also a book contains

data for time table of trains, their types and lines

between stations.

Data store

A geodatabase is a database designed to store,

query, and manipulate geographic information and

spatial data. It is a specialized type of spatial

database. There are two types of data:

1. Spatial data

� Scanning paper map to convert it to raster

image.

� Digitizing the map using Arc GIS.

Converting spatial feature on the map into a digital

formats (points, lines)

We have two (layers) shape files as shown in Fig.

2.

Stations: the shape file is represented in point

feature type and show stations on the map.

Base lines: The shape file is created in line feature

type and shows railway lines between two stations

are clarified in Fig. 3. Final digitized map is

shown in Fig. 4.

2. Attribute data Here, database is created by using Arc catalog.

Database creation basically depends on the quality

and quantity of data available from data capture

step. Database tables are:

1. Base lines

2. Stations

3. Train _date

4. Trains

The relationship between database tables is

described in Fig. 5. The base line table is shown in

Fig. 6. The data view is listed in Fig. 7. The

primary key of this table is "OBJECTID". The

attribute "SHAPE" contains data captured from

digitizing process (line feature). "SHAPE_Length"

is the length of line. "ID" is the line ID. "Name" is

the line name. The design view of trains table is

shown in Fig. 8. The data view of trains table is

listed in Fig. 9. The primary key is "Train_NO".

This table contain train types that are stored in the

database. It contains 684 records corresponding to

the total number of trains. The design view of

train_dates table is implemented in Fig. 10. Here,

a composed primary key ("Train_No" and

"Station_Name") is used. The data view of

train_dates tables is shown in Fig. 11. This table

consists of four columns (train_No, Station_Name,

Arrival/Going, Notes). It contains train dates with

more than 6000 records that are stored in the

database.

III. Analysis and Development

Here, AspMap for .net is used to show the

designed map of the railway. AspMap is a set of

server-side mapping controls and components that

let maps be added to the Web applications.

AspMap can be accessed directly by ASP.NET,

VB.NET, C# and other .NET supported

environments.

Advantages of AspMap:

AspMap allows to calculate point-to-point, multi-

point routes and incorporate turn-by-turn driving

directions to the Web applications. AspMap's

routing features include [75,76]:

1. Generation of a route between two or more

points based on their coordinates.

2. Determination of the shortest routes.

3. Evaluation of the quickest routes based on

distance and speed.


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4. The calculated route can be plotted on a map as

a map layer.

5. Routes are calculated with the use of dynamic

segmentation (the ability to construct a route from

any selected point along a road segment).

6. Gives access to additional information about

road segments and streets, such as the turn angle,

distance, time, compass direction, street name,

road attributes, start and end coordinates of road

segments and streets.

AspMap includes the Road Network Builder

utility so we can build road networks from vector

format maps such as industry standard TAB files

and Shape files. Road Network Builder allows to

specify:

1. Road speed for different road classes or road

segments.

2. One-way and closed roads.

AspMap tools have been used in this research

work:

Zoom in tool

Control button allows users to zoom in by either

clicking on a map or drawing a rectangle. Zoom in

to a station is shown in Fig. 12. When we click at

zoom in tool and then click in any point in the

map, this point is zoomed in or we may also make

rectangle on a range in the map this range will be

zoomed as illustrated in Fig. 13. The result is

shown in Fig. 14. Zoom in tool has the properties

shown in Fig. 15.

zoom out:

Control button allows users to zoom out by

clicking on the map. When we select this tool and

then click at the map at any point, the map will be

zoomed out to a reduced scale so the map will be

smaller and smaller each time we click. The

essential map is shown in Fig. 16. As shown the map in its general view, when we choose zoom out

tool and click in the map, the map will be as

shown in Fig. 17. The result of Info window tool

applying to “Algmalya” station is illustrated in

Fig. 18.

Zoom to station tool

To select station from drop down list, this is a

query to retrieve all train dates of selected station.

The code of zoom to a station tool is shown in

appendix “A”. An example for choosing zoom to a

station is shown in Fig. 19. The result is shown in

Fig. 20.

Hot spot tool

So fast query tool that cache station names within

the map. Map caching is an effective way to make

mapping application run faster. When we create a

cache, AspMap draws the entire map at different

scales and stores copies of the map images as tiles

on the server. An example for hot spot at a station

is shown in Fig. 21.

IV. Conclusion

A comprehensive geographic information system

for railway has been presented. It has been proved

that such system is successful in a number of

issues like determination of the best path to get the

accident location and perform emergency services.

This research work has achieved the following:

1. Capture data from its resources such as the

paper map & catalogue data.

2. Storing attribute data in tables (scan the map

and then digitized it ) and create databases.

3. Give the opportunity to recognize any stations

in the country on the map.

4. Manage data to show all dates, notes

(going/arrival) and types of trains.

5. Find the shortest way between any two new

stations.

6. Avoid incidents between trains.

7. Management of disasters and crises.

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Appendix “A”

The Code of Zoom to a Station

protected void

statesList_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender,

System.EventArgs e)

{

AspMap.Recordset state;

int selectedValue = Convert.ToInt32(

statesList.SelectedValue);

state =

Map1["Stations"].SearchExpression("ID = " +

selectedValue );

if (!state.EOF)

{

Map1.Extent = state.RecordExtent;

sqlselect = "SELECT Train_Dates.*

FROM Station INNER JOIN Train_Dates ON

Station.Name = Train_Dates.Station_Name

WHERE (((Station.ID)=" +

statesList.SelectedValue + "));";

oledbConnectString =

"PROVIDER=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;DATA

Source=" + MapPath("Layers/GIS2.mdb");

da = new OleDbDataAdapter(sqlselect,

oledbConnectString);

DataTable TrainDates = new DataTable();

da.Fill(TrainDates);

GridView1.DataSource = TrainDates;

GridView1.DataBind();

da.Dispose();

// highlight the state using yellow color

Map1["Stations"].Renderer.Field = "ID";

AspMap.Feature selectedState =

Map1["Stations"].Renderer.Add();

selectedState.Value = selectedValue;

selectedState.Symbol.FillColor =

Color.Green;

selectedState.Symbol.Size = 15;

selectedState.Symbol.LineColor =

Color.Black;


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} }

Fig.1: Paper map shows stations and base lines between them.

Fig. 2: Localization of Stations on the map.


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Fig. 3: Railway lines between stations.

Fig. 4: Final digitized map.


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Fig. 5: Relationship between database tables.

Fig. 6: Base line table.

Fig. 7: Data view of base line table.


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Fig. 8: Design view of trains table.

Fig.9: Data view of trains table.

Fig. 10: Design view of train_dates table.


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Fig. 11: Data view of train_dates table.

Fig. 12: Zoom in to a station.


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Fig. 13: Illustartion of zoom in property.

Fig. 14: The result of zoom in.


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Fig. 15: Zoom in Tool.

Fig. 16: The essential map.


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Fig. 17: The result of zoom out.

Fig. 18: The result of Info window tool at “Algmalya” station.


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Fig. 19: A request for zooming to “Alferdan” station.

Fig. 20: The result of zooming to “Alferdan” station.


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Fig. 21: Hot Spot at “Alsabria” station.


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