care Prof:
Thousands of people around the globe have died in train wrecks brought on by natural disasters. In 2004, the tsunami in Southeast Asia derailed a Sri Lankan train, killing 1,700 individuals. But with modern advances, these tragedies can be avoided – and a Tel Aviv University researcher, working in collaboration with teams from seven countries, is leading the way.
Prof. Lev V. Eppelbaum of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Geophysics & Planetary Sciences and his colleagues are collecting high-tech sensing data from satellites, airplanes, magnetic and soil sensors, and unmanned aircraft to devise a solution that will supply a reliable early-warning system for train operators.
It’s all portion with the European Project FP7 research, “Integrated Program for Transport Infrastructures Surveillance and Monitoring by Electromagnetic Sensing,” which includes participants from Israel, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Romania. The international team of researchers aims to connect emerging technologies so that train accidents triggered by avalanches, earthquakes and even terrorists can be avoided.
A method to detect sabotage
Dr. Virginia Pascual, former director with the pediatric rheumatology division at UT Southwestern, contributed to the study. Researchers from Dynavax Technologies Corp. had been lead and senior authors of the paper; researchers at Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, the National Institutes of Health and Institut Curie in Paris also contributed towards the investigation.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Wellness, the Alliance for Lupus Research and also the Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research.
“Sinkholes, avalanches, landslides, earthquakes, flash floods – these disasters can cause train wrecks anywhere around the globe,” says Prof. Eppelbaum. “We are hoping to develop a platform that can be fitted to any railway, passenger or freight carrier, to better predict natural disasters and possible terror attacks on rail lines.” He says that his part of the study should be completed by next year.
“We are creating a new interpretation technique – permitting us to integrate cutting-edge technologies from across Europe,” he says, adding that the greatest challenge, right now, is eliminating background “noise” from the data becoming collected.
Climatic features and parameters like soil types and physical geography can be very different from 1 region to one more, which makes the work even far more of a challenge. Some of Prof. Eppelbaum’s recent research advances have been reported inside the Zeitschrift f???1r Geomorphologie, the Journal of Arid Environments and the Proceedings with the SAGEEP Conference (USA).
On the right Amtrak
The international team also hopes to examine the additional risk of terror attacks on trains. While all the other data collected by the research teams is going to be made public, this section will stay top secret.
Prof. Eppelbaum expects their methods is going to be adopted by the world’s railway systems. As the cost of fuel for cars and planes rises, and environmentally-friendly train travel is much more heavily promoted, experts predict that far more Americans will be riding the rails to work and between cities. In 2008, about 30 million passengers rode on Amtrak trains, and train ridership figures have been steadily increasing.
At present, there’s no monitoring method for either natural disasters or terror attacks on rail systems in America or anywhere else. Prof. Eppelbaum says he has his work cut out for him: putting together different geophysical measurements and formats of sensors, he is collecting very different kinds of data and trying to turn it into usable data.
“It’s complicated math and physics,” says Prof. Eppelbaum. “And yes, it includes lots of scribbling and equations on the chalkboard.”
Source:
George Hunka
American Friends of Tel Aviv University