Canadian Pacific units at rest - Date/Photographer unknown.

31 May 2013

Future Transportation Routes Will be Paved with Ones and Zeros

Canada - Canada is a vast country linked by extensive transportation routes, from roads, to rail, to air. The Industrial Internet will bring Canadians closer together by making trucks, locomotives, and jet aircraft using those routes more efficient.
 
The new ingredient? Advanced sensors that will monitor vehicle operations and send waves of rich data, the ones and zeros of binary information, to computers armed with sophisticated data analytics programs. This intelligence will provide human decision makers, including drivers, pilots, dispatchers, fleet managers, and engineers, with the information they need to make travel faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
 
Fuel savings will be the most obvious advantages. GE estimates that the transportation sector consumes 27 percent of the world's energy. Heavy fleets, including trucks, aircraft, and locomotives, consume about half that energy.
 
Significant fuel efficiencies can be achieved by monitoring the rotating parts of each vehicle, including motors, turbines, engines, drives, fans, compressors, wheels, and alternators.
 
Diagnostic systems and predictive analytics will not only save fuel, but reduce maintenance costs, predict and prevent machine breakdowns, and inspire new, more efficient designs.
 
Intelligent fleet scheduling systems will offer real-time overviews of the network operations of locomotives, planes, and trucks. Global positioning systems and other resources will track vehicles in transit, while analytic software will provide operators with the intelligence required to manage schedules and compensate immediately for unanticipated events.
 
GE estimates the worldwide cost of transportation logistics at $4.9-trillion per year, about seven percent of global GDP.
 
The railway sector estimates that it loses almost 2.5 percent of its costs to system inefficiencies. If Industrial Internet technologies can claw back only one percent of those system losses, it would result in global savings of $27-billion over 15 years. Truck transportation could achieve similar benefits.
 
Author unknown.

Vancouver Island
British Columbia
Canada