Esri
Esri
Esri Summit Showcases the Benefits of GIS to the Rail Industry
This article first appeared in the Railway-News Magazine Issue 4 2024.
Esri’s annual GIS Rail Summit showcased the many ways US railroads are benefiting from geographic information systems.
Esri, a leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, recently held its annual GIS Rail Summit as part of its IMGIS Conference in Palm Springs, California.
This two-day event brought together railroads, transit authorities, associations and vendors to share knowledge and their experiences implementing GIS solutions.
Attendees included Utah Transit Authority, OmniTrax, Amtrak and Conrail, all of which participated in Esri’s ‘State of the Railroads’ roundtable session.
The summit was arranged and opened by Erik Henderson, ESRI’s Director Rail Industry Solutions, who then welcomed speakers to the stage to discuss the GIS projects they’ve been involved in.
First up was Bartlett & West Software Developer, Trevis Martin. He presented the work his team is undertaking to improve linear reference system (LRS) functionality for mobile users. Railroads often use many different systems and methods for recording information about field assets, but the accurate milepost value and engineering station values are difficult to obtain when standing in the field, so they created the functionality to identify your location along a measured line to obtain these values. This will help inspectors to more accurately record incidents in the field as well as to correctly identify areas of concern.
