Rail Infrastructures

Dear Colleagues,

Railway Transport infrastructures are one of the most important factors for a country's progress, and is considered as the “lifeline” of a nation, and is proven as a key element for adding speed and efficiency to a country's progress. Railways are currently experiencing higher demands on infrastructure performance, capacity and service quality. As a result, higher level of resilience against failure, robustness and availability at reduced cost are expected, to meet the planned capacity utilization and safety criteria.

Track is the fundamental part of railway infrastructure and represents a significant part of maintenance effort and cost. Track system (e.g. rails, wheels, switches and crossings) degrades with age and usage; and loses its functionality over time. Poor quality of track, may result in e.g. safety problems, speed reduction, traffic disruption, greater maintenance cost.

Hence, it is of outmost importance to develop methodologies and tools for accurate prediction of track condition, as well as selection and implementation of an effective health management strategy.

The aim of this special issue is to publish state-of-the-art research papers focused on the topics associated with data quality, fault diagnosis, prognosis and health management, as well as Life cycle assessment, maintenance planning and scheduling of railway track system.

Analytical models, empirical studies, and case studies are all welcomed as long as an article provides new insights and implications to the field of Railway track life cycle and health management.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Infrastructures is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Railway track
• Machine learning
• Predictive analytics
• Data quality
• Fault diagnosis, prognosis and health management
• Life cycle assessment
• Maintenance planning and scheduling