The Flagship Project stemming from this topic shall develop under the following capabilities the enablers and any other which may contribute to deliver the aforementioned expected outcome with the associated maturity level foreseen (up to – depending of the Use Case):

Capability for Information sharing across the supply chain and TMS

Enabler 1: Scalable information platform to integrate and exchange information (e.g., asset health, maintenance planning, fleet operation, etc.) across the supply chain and TMS, requiring necessary management and sharing agreements between the involved actors at TRL7 in 2028, and amongst others:

• secure standardised interfaces, methods, and processes for different data exchange (e.g., inspection devices to Asset Management Platform, etc.) at TRL7 in 2028, and

Capability for Unmanned and non-invasive monitoring and inspections

Enabler 2: Improved (in terms of cost reduction and/or better accuracy) asset diagnostic and inspection systems, as well as advanced, context aware, unmanned automated monitoring and inspections solutions at TRL7 in 2028, and amongst others:

• AI and ML solutions for automated monitoring and inspections, and data fusion algorithms to combine information provided by different inspection techniques to better determine the health status of the assets at TRL7 in 2028;
• Development of context awareness techniques for unmanned interventions at TRL 7 in 2028;
• Development of synchronization algorithms for inspection data stamping in terms of accurate position and time at TRL7 in 2028;

Capability for Advanced and holistic asset decisions

Enabler4: New methodologies and technologies to leverage advanced and holistic asset decisions during the span of their life cycle at TRL7/8 in 2028, based on:

• probabilistic models for component failure to integrate cost of potential hazard risks and cost of potential unavailability in the asset maintenance decision strategy, at TRL7 in 2028
• Harmonisation of railway asset LCC determination, at TRL7 in 2028
• Operational and IoT data with additional rail system information and knowledge as well as technologies to enable cooperative diagnostic between assets at TRL8/9 in 2028
• AI-based hybrid Decision Support based on predictive and prescriptive data analytics and Machine Learning algorithms for anomaly detection and failure prediction with optimised human-AI interactions at TRL7 in 2028

Enabler 5: Digital Twins integrated with BIM, GIS tools, and Virtual and Augmented Reality to enable agile visualization for different stakeholders of asset health status (historical, current, and forecasted) in various use cases at TRL 7 in 2028.

Capability for Advanced and holistic design and certification of assets

Enabler 6: Advanced and holistic design and certification of assets, at TRL 6/8 in 2025, based on:

• New ethical-by-design materials and/or innovative materials and processes for additive manufacturing, with advanced LCC characteristics, at TRL 6 in 2028
• Advanced automated certification techniques (including virtual certification), at TRL7 in 2028
• Energy scavenging approaches for self-supporting monitoring solutions, at TRL 6 in 2028

Capability for Remotely controlled, unmanned and metadata-assisted interventions

Enabler 7: Development of remotely controlled, unmanned and metadata-assisted interventions in construction, maintenance, and renewal operations, based on:

• non-invasive or collaborative unmanned robotic actuators and wearables as well as advanced unmanned robotic vehicles with AI and ML algorithms for automated robotic interventions, at TRL7 in 2028.
• additive manufacturing techniques and validation standards for manufacturing and repairing assets at TRL 6/7 in 2028.

Developments on all those enablers should also cover important preparatory works with higher TRL for the future set of demonstration foreseen in the Multi- annual Work programme in view of the evolutions of the solutions.

For Research & innovation and demonstrations activities (within the action) making use of data models related to the interoperability or safety of the rail system, those data models should be aligned with the ERA Ontology. This ontology defines the conceptual framework and the specific terms and relationships for the interoperability or safety of the rail system in the EU that shall be used or where relevant extended. This includes the reuse of the ERA ontology with its semantic artifacts (shacl rules, skos ..) and in cases where it is not sufficient, extensions should be proposed to maintain semantic consistency and interoperability across systems. Those extensions proposals should cover the processes to validate extension to the ERA Ontology with compliant datasets and related competency questions and linked SPARQL queries based on interoperability testbed validation tools (Interoperability Test Bed Guides — ITB Guides). Corresponding documentation should also include any mappings or transformations considered in the Research & Innovation activities and any assumptions made.