Moving train and infrastructure monitoring to the cloud improves rail safety

Fintraffic Railway Ltd. provides railway traffic control and management services in Finland. The core services are railway traffic control, traffic planning and capacity management to coordinate railway work and traffic, operations centre operations and passenger information services. Fintraffic is responsible for the safe and smooth running of more than 500,000 trains and 82 million rail passengers per year.

VALTSU is a core service for monitoring and securing the railway infrastructure. Together with Fintraffic, we have developed VALTSU and other critical systems for managing Finland’s rail traffic. As part of Fintraffic’s cloud transformation, we helped Fintraffic move VALTSU to the AWS cloud. The cloud-based service has better performance, fault tolerance and security, and enables Fintraffic to respond faster to any problems on trains or tracks, improving rail traffic and its safety. 

Sensors across rail systems detect issues on trains or rails

Using an extensive network of sensors across the rail system, VALTSU monitors the condition of rolling stock on the railways and the stress caused by vehicles on the tracks. These sensors provide a continuous stream of data, enabling the system to maintain vigilant surveillance. VALTSU detects anomalies, such as elevated bearing temperatures, and immediately alerts the traffic control centre.  

VALTSU service notifies all necessary parties to act

In cooperation with the operators of the control centre, VALTSU ensures that all the necessary parties, from traffic managers to train operators, are informed and ready to act quickly to maintain safety and service continuity. This immediate response mechanism is critical in preventing potential accidents and ensuring the continuous flow of rail services.

VALTSU is integrated with other transport systems so that data is available and up to date to all relevant parties. They have a good picture of the condition of the train and the railway, and can use the data to improve train loading, manage maintenance schedules, develop the sensor network and overall traffic planning, for example. 

Moving to the cloud for better performance and security

We helped Fintraffic with its cloud transformation and moving services such as VALTSU to the AWS cloud platform. As VALTSU is a critical service required 24/7, it is important that it is robust, available and any downtime or failures are effectively mitigated. Moving to a cloud platform provided better performance and overall fault tolerance. We are managing the cloud platform and operations for the VALTSU solution.

There is a lot of confidential and critical train and infrastructure data in services like VALTSU. This makes security essential. The cloud platform offers advanced services for sophisticated access management and to meet other security requirements.

All in all, the move to the cloud has further improved the performance and stability of VALTSU, resulting in better railway safety and more effective management of the railway infrastructure.