Keywords: condition data, diagnostic systems, inspection, measuring vehicles, measuring trains, monitoring, railway infrastructure, safety, standards, SICS approach.

Today, by means of measuring vehicles and measuring trains, it is possible to inspect and measure railway infrastructure, and to do so without creating obstacles in the running of high speed commercial trains, with the aim of collecting important railway condition data. The most important goal is to guarantee the highest level of safety together with a high quality of the infrastructure. At the same time it is also important to constantly improve what railways offer in terms of speed and capacity as well as to reduce their maintenance costs. The traditional approach, based on measuring vehicles and measuring trains having several diagnostic systems installed on board and passing condition data into a database, is gradually being replaced by a more comprehensive and advanced approach that is called the "SICS approach" (synchronization-integration of measured data, correlation for measurements and defects, statistics on "Big Data"). This method is an integrated and holistic approach overcoming all the limitations of the traditional approach and giving the great advantage to support, in an easier way, the implementation of national and international standards while also increasing the safety of the railway infrastructure. MER MEC has been involved in several projects for the total monitoring and measuring of the infrastructure and has accumulated over the years a very significant experience in the SICS approach.

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