Apparatus and method for monitoring of infrastructure condition

A method, comprising:

• acquiring track data and position data, with, respectively, an inspection system and a positioning system, during a current pass of a vehicle over an expanse of rail track;
• transmitting the track data and the position data to a remotely located centralized computing system;
• determining a location-indexed track condition of the expanse of rail track at the remotely located centralized computing system based on the processed track data and the processed position data acquired from the current pass;
• and
• combining the determined location-indexed track condition of the expanse of rail track from the current pass with a location-indexed track condition of the expanse of rail track determined from track data and condition data acquired from at least one previous pass of the vehicle over the expanse of rail track to determine an aggregate location-indexed track condition of the expanse of rail track.

A method, comprising:

• performing a series of passes of a vehicle over an expanse of track;
• acquiring track data, with an inspection system, for a plurality of discrete locations along the expanse of railroad track from the series of passes;
• acquiring position data, with a positioning system, for the plurality of discrete locations along the expanse of railroad track from the series of passes;
• location-indexing the track data to the discrete locations based on the position data;
• during each pass in the series of passes, transmitting the location-indexed track data to a remotely located centralized computing system;
• determining at the centralized computing system, for each pass in the series of passes, a track condition probability for each of the plurality of discrete locations based on the location-indexed track data;
• combining the track condition probabilities from each pass in the series of passes for each of the plurality of discrete locations to determine a final track condition probability for each of the plurality of discrete locations;
• and
• determining a control strategy for a future pass of the vehicle along the expanse of rail track based on the final track condition probability for each of the plurality of discrete locations.