Monitoring the quality of railway tracks from space

Subsidence can play a key role in the performance, serviceability and safety of engineering works such as railway embankments. Research by Deltares in 2007 indicated that 40% of the maintenance costs for railways in the Netherlands are linked to preserving the geometry of the railway track. Deltares developed a predictive settlement model for railway embankments built on soft soils. The main achievement of this project is the stochastic prediction of secondary settlement using satellite data and subsoil data. This prediction will improve the assessment of the quality of railway tracks in the long term and help to rationalise existing monitoring campaigns.