Abstract
Indian Railways, the nations transport lifeline, is the worlds fourth-largest railway network, with more than 70,000 passenger coaches and over 11,000 locomotives. Hence, ensuring the safety and security of the people is a much-prioritized issue these days. According to a survey, an average of 110 accidents occurred each year between 2013 and 2018, in which around 990 people were killed and 1,500 injured. About 54% of accidents were due to reasons like lever crossing, fire, collisions, run away, and suicides. Such problems need to be analyzed intelligently in a cognitive manner based on human behavior and movement. The idea that communities or groups of people provide data similar to those obtainable from a single sensor is known as social sensing. This chapter presents a brief idea about social sensing and how it relates to Big Data. A framework based on the assimilation of Big data, Internet-of-Things, and Cloud Computing is presented for the entire railway operation mechanism. Along with that, some accident prevention techniques with Metaheuristics strategies are also discussed. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion on some future research axes.
