THE CHALLENGE OF VAST AMOUNTS OF DATA

摘要

Railroads are infrastructure-intensive organizations that rely on significant amounts of information and data for operations and maintenance. As an aggregate, the U.S. railroad industry operates approximately 200,000 miles of railroad track, over 30,000,000 car loads (shipments) per year, and manages a fleet of more than 1.6 million rail cars and 25,000 locomotives. The U.S. railroad industry's annual revenues are of the order of $80 billion and their annual capital program is of the order of $20 billion per year, which includes replacements of such capital assets as rolling stock (cars and locomotives) and key track components such as rails, ties, ballast and bridges.