Pacing up with the global counterparts, Suresh Prabhu-led Indian Railways has stepped up its game in digitization and using data-centric approaches to benefit the railways.

It is quite apparent that Indian Railways carry millions of passengers daily apart from tonnes of commodities across the regions. This heavy transaction results in huge amount of data, which the Indian railways is planning to monetize. However, the government has made sure that no privacy law would be compromised in doing so.

The announcement which came during the inauguration of round table conference on data analytics for the railways, the government officials are hopeful that analytics in railways can help in determining pricing of services, planning train operations, routes, safety measures, proactive disaster management, predictive maintenance to avoid failure and much more.

Suresh Prabhu believes that Indian Railways is on the largest data creators in the world, which creates large repositories of data in the form of passenger ticketing and freight operations. He is quick to add that this large volume of data needs to be used wisely and data analytics is a way forward.

He also highlighted the need for proper data analytics for the future management information system, making appropriate decisions and eventually monetizing the data, albeit any compromise to privacy law and ethics.

There are many forms of data in the railways such as reservation data of trains, passengers, earnings, utilisation of trains, class wise occupancy, waiting lists and passenger profile etc, which the government officials are trying to tap upon, to provide innovative products to passengers so that occupancy is improved and they get confirmed accommodation.