​​The PRASA (Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa) Engineering Research Chair is a research group positioned in the Department of Industrial Engineering at SU to research and solve railway and related engineering problems. What started out as a small gathering of under and postgraduate engineering students is today a large multidisciplinary team spanning across the majority of the departments in the Faculty of Engineering. It is the only group in the faculty with the common goal of improving rail engineering and making rail the preferred means of travel in South Africa.

Collaborating for success

In the fast-evolving world of rail, it is important to stay abreast of national and international developments. One of the mandates of the chair is therefore to facilitate growth and improvement through the establishment and maintenance of a strong network of local and international collaborators. A notable local networking initiative is the joint research programme of the Cape Higher Education Consortium and the Western Cape Government (CHEC-WCG), which funded research on vandalism and theft in 2017. The chair furthermore maintains close contact with representatives at the Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works who form part of the chair's advisory board.

A consortium between MC Mobility and the St. Pölten University of Applied Science in Austria investigated the development of an integrated platform for the life cycle costing of the infrastructure of PRASA. This project was funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and executed during 2018 with the help of PRASA's Western Cape Infrastructure Department. It took 12 months to complete and formal feedback on the results was presented in November 2018. It was agreed that the impact of the life cycle costing model ought to be beneficial to PRASA, and that the project team should proceed with developing and implementing a prototype platform. To assist PRASA with the implementation, a postgraduate student was assigned to carry on with the prototype and is currently in Austria to benchmark a practical solution.

Vandals and thieves: a case study

The vandalising and theft of railway assets is a major cause of disruption in the South African rail network. With population growth increasing and the need for public transport, these disruptions prevent the rail network from being able to meet the growing demand for its services.

During 2018, data analysis was carried out on incidences of vandalism and theft of the Western Cape rail network's rolling stock and infrastructure assets. The analysis showed a distinct increase in incidents between 2013 and 2014, a decrease from 2014 to 2015, and a significant increase again towards 2017. Hotspot locations for the vandalising and theft of rolling stock assets were found to be Paarden Eiland, Salt River and Cape Town; infrastructure assets were found to be most at risk in Bonteheuwel, Lavistown and Nyanga.

In the case of both rolling stock and infrastructure assets, the components most affected were copper cables. The collected data enabled a cause-and-effect analysis aimed at identifying the root causes of incidents against the rail assets. Most vandalism incidents were found to be cases of acquisition vandalism (theft), driven by the illegal business opportunities that stem from the high value of copper and the accessibility of the rail network.

Possible engineering solutions to prevent such incidents include encasing the copper cables in glass-fibre-reinforced plastic pipes placed inside concrete troughs, anti-theft trigger alarms and CCTV and/or drones at access points, the overall improvement of perimeter protection, changing the company culture, and introducing fire retardant materials.

This research is helping PRASA prevent vandalism and theft incidents by revealing and explaining the patterns that exist within the data. By reducing the number of incidents against the rail network, PRASA will be able to increase rail services and meet the growing demand for this mode of transport.

* This article featured in the latest edition of Stellenbosch University (SU)'s  multi-award winning publication Research at Stellenbosch University . Produced annually by SU's Division for Research Development (DRD), this flagship publication offers the national and international research community as well as other interested parties a comprehensive, yet accessible overview of innovative and interesting research being done at the institution.The theme of the edition is Research for Impact which is one of SU's core strategic themes from its Vision 2040 and Strategic Framework 2019–2024.

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