French railways operator SNCF is using IBM Watson's internet of things (IoT) platform to provide improved rail safety for 13.5 million daily passengers.

With IBM’s cloud-based IoT platform, SNCF is connecting its complete rail system from trains, railroad tracks and stations to gather insights from real-time information on data.

With these insights, the company will be able to manage its equipment, as well as improve train security and availability.

SNCF chief technology officer Raphaël Viard said: “Today the IoT is entering a momentous stage in the railway sector’s history. SNCF’s involvement with the IoT rests on three core principles.

“It must have a strong operational focus by digitalising the business lines processes and cover the following three pillars: cybersecurity by design, 'platform as a service' deployment model, the leveraging of big data for decision support.”

"It must cover the following three pillars: cybersecurity by design, 'platform as a service' deployment model, the leveraging of big data for decision support."

The company is currently developing specialised industrial sensors in order to collect and analyse this data.

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The sensors will be installed on tracks and trains, securely sending data points to the IBM Watson IoT Platform on IBM Cloud in real-time.

By predicting maintenance requirements, SNCF can prevent trains from being taken out of service.

SNCF estimates that the train and track maintenance approach could reduce costs, while improving the reliability of its signals and trains.

The company manages the scheduling, operations and maintenance of a network covering 30,000km of track, 15,000 trains and 3,000 stations in France.