An ensemble-based change-point detection method for identifying unexpected behaviour of railway tunnel infrastructures

In this paper a data mining method for detecting critical behaviour of a railway tunnel is presented. The method starts with a pre-processing step that aims to remove the noise in the recorded data. A feature definition and selection step is then performed to identify the most critical area of the tunnel. An ensemble of change-point detection algorithms is proposed, in order to analyse the critical area of the tunnel and point out the time when unexpected behaviour occurs, as well as its duration and location. The work activities, which are carried out at the time of occurrence of the critical behaviour and have caused this behaviour, are finally identified from a database of the work schedule and used for the validation of the results. Using the proposed method, fast and reliable information about infrastructure condition is provided to decision makers.