The SMART: Sustainable Maintenance and Rehabilitation of Railway Track project, funded under the Fund for Bilateral Relations, aimed to foster bilateral initiatives that introduced innovative approaches to railway maintenance and rehabilitation. Various project activities were successfully developed and completed, including the virtual kick-off meeting, workshops held in Portugal and Kraków, the Autumn School in Lisbon, and the final workshop in Oslo, Norway.
During the workshops, the project team had the opportunity to meet experts working in various related fields, fostering collaborations and opening new perspectives. The team was able to correlate the original idea of collecting acoustic signals via UAV with the collection of vibro-acoustic signals through sensors mounted directly on railway vehicles.
The Autumn School trained participants in railway maintenance and rehabilitation techniques, signal processing, new rehabilitation materials such as geosynthetics, and relatively recent non-destructive testing techniques such as ground-penetrating radar.
All these activities aimed to optimize railway maintenance, paving the way for a new paradigm in railway maintenance and rehabilitation, from preventive maintenance to condition-based predictive maintenance. This approach ensures significant cost savings, making rail transport more sustainable and competitive while promoting sustainable urban mobility and transport systems.
The following achieved results stand out: new approaches to railway maintenance and rehabilitation, a new Erasmus+ agreement, new proposals for national projects, new proposals for mobility (MSCA), and new proposals for postdoctoral fellowships.