Invited Lecture: Digitisation technologies for railway infrastructure systems towards climate adaptation, circularity and net zero

This presentation will highlight the best practices and recent research advances in circular economy implementation in railway asset management. The novel digital twins and artificial intelligence tools and strategies to safeguard railway systems as a whole and to enable the transition to net zero and beyond will be presented. The presentation will highlight key strategies and challenges to implement new technologies sustainably. The insights in systems circularity and the challenges in risk-averse international standards will be discussed in the presentation. The focus of the presentation is placed on systems thinking and multi-level, multi-scale interconnected digitisations that are matter to every stakeholder. Each stage of life cycle and associated risks and uncertainties will be presented to enhance the correlation with new railway technologies for all systems including railway tracks, infrastructure, electrification, rolling stocks, signalling systems, buildings and siding, as well as air space development and the environments.

My bio: Dr. Kaewunruen is a Reader in Railway and Civil Engineering, with strong research interest in railway engineering; and infrastructure engineering and management, with special emphasis in Digital maintenance, Sustainability, Bayesian modelling and Machine Learning. He has over 600 refereed publications and evidence-based authoritative reports. With nearly 25 year experience in railways, he spent over 14 years in industry within railway authority. His industry experience had involved many railway construction and maintenance projects and has engaged in many research projects. He has been appointed as the UK principal scientist for various ISO standards as well as in BSI and CEN standard committees. He has supervised over 30 PhD students, 9 postdoctoral scholars, over 100 masters students, and over 10 Erasmus+ engineers. His work has been cited over 10,000 times (Google Scholar h-index: 50) and has been consecutively ranked in the world top 2% most cited scientists by Stanford University. He is a management committee member of new EU COST Action CA21103 - Implementation of Circular Economy in the Built Environment (CircularB) and the Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Built Environment.