Developing decision support tools for rail infrastructure managers

European rail infrastructure managers (IMs) are managing ageing rail infrastructure with 95% of the network having been built before 1914. EU transport policy provides the challenge to IMs to increase the productivity of existing rail networks, prioritise renewal and optimise new sections to reduce bottlenecks, increase productivity and achieve a switch from freight transport by road to rail. This needs to be achieved at a time when budgets are restricted whilst improving customer satisfaction and dealing with challenges from natural hazards and extreme weather events which are affecting all of Europe. In order to deal effectively with this grand challenge, Europe will need to develop methods to manage its rail infrastructure across the single European railway area. Whilst decision support tools are widely applied across, these systems tend to concentrate on only one asset and inherently suffer from the several limitations. In this paper the European H2020 project Destination Rail that focuses on the development of decision support tool for rail infrastructure managers is presented. Within DESTination RAIL the aim is to provide solutions for a number of problems faced by EU infrastructure managers, such as assessment of existing assets, use of existing databases controlled by an information management system, risk assessment, maintenance and construction techniques for treating rail infrastructure including tracks, earthworks and structures, whole life cycle assessment and impact on the traffic flow. Each of these separate streams are incorporated into the Decision Support Tool which will be the primary exploitable deliverable from the project, and demonstrated on several railway projects across the European network.