Smart Computing Applications in Railway Systems - A case study in Indian Railways Passenger Reservation System

The demand for safe, fast, and reliable rail services continues to be the reason for concern in all the countries across the globe. Lack of operational efficiency and reliability, safety and security issues, and aging railway systems and practices are haunting various countries to bring about a change in their existing rail infrastructure. The global rail industry struggles to meet the increasing demand for freight and passenger transportation due to lack of optimized use of rail network and inefficient use of rail assets. This is expected to induce rail executives to build rail systems that are smarter and more efficient. The passenger reservation system of Indian Railways is one of the world’s largest reservation models. Daily about one million passengers travel in reserved accommodation with Indian Railways. Another sixteen million travel with unreserved tickets in Indian Railways. In this vast system, it is a herculean task to efficiently handle the passenger data, which is a key point of consideration now-a-days. In this paper, the authors have explored different issues of implementing smart computing in railway systems pertaining to reservation models.