Delivering award-winning innovation to enhance service provision at the Dubai Metro

Our customers 2019

Our Engineering and Maintenance Team at the Dubai Metro received an ‘Innovation in Transport Award’ at the 2019 Logistics and Transport Awards in Dubai.

The Dubai Metro consists of 79 trains which normally operate unmanned, in fully automatic mode. The core system governing this is the signalling system, which constantly sends data back and forth between each train and a central computer system that decides how each train will operate.

Any significant corruption in the data can cause a train to cease automatic functioning and the system is designed to raise an alarm for any major faults that are detected. Trace discrepancies in the data caused by minor faults will not trigger the alarm, leaving them undetected. However, whilst such minor faults do not represent an immediate risk, they may in time contribute to a major fault.

Recognising an opportunity to improve the overall efficiency of the network by mitigating this secondary risk, the Engineering and Maintenance Team designed and built a system which enables the identification of such risks and intervention well in advance of any critical failure.

Through the application of machine learning and complex coding algorithms, the solution makes visible the ‘DNA’ of a potential failure by graphically representing historic signalling data held on the server. The data can then easily be interrogated in order to isolate and address any potential faults identified, such as through minor repairs or withdrawal from service if necessary.