The Use of Technology ‘Big Data’ and ‘Predictive Analytics’ in the Power Supply System of Railways

To date, the infrastructure of the RZhD OJSC (Russian Railways) is aimed at digitization and informational support. Today, it has the considerable number of digital information systems in place and the figure still grows. Continuous digitalization generates the huge amount of data. This tremendous data size needs to be collected and processed, including, by using a new technology named “big data”. This article describes the major challenges associated with big data analytics. Thus, the better part of the data should be processed on a real-time basis to save the resources of data storage and transportation devices. Besides, the presented tools allow a rich toolkit to solve the transport problems related to identification of the equipment operating modes and the deployment of the predictive analytics tool to assess the abnormal equipment status. The article gives specific examples of using the Big Data technologies to assess the existing infrastructure conditions. Various information systems, automated monitoring systems and microprocessor systems installed at infrastructural facilities were used as the sources of information.