EP4463350A1

EP4463350A1 - Data management system for a signaling system

Info

Publication number: EP4463350A1
Application number: EP22700911.5A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Kristofer HELL; Chaitanya INAMDAR; Harsh Piparsaniya
Original assignee: Siemens Mobility GmbH
Current assignee: Siemens Mobility GmbH
Priority date: 2022-01-10
Filing date: 2022-01-10
Publication date: 2024-11-20
Also published as: WO2023131423A1

Abstract

A data management system for a signaling system (105), and a method for enabling the data management system is disclosed herein. The method comprises detecting, by a processing unit (130), an event associated with at least one component (127) in a signaling system (105). Further, a plurality of artifacts corresponding to the signaling system (105), stored in a database (185), is traversed to identify at least one artifact associated with the component (127). Based on the at least one artifact identified, a work order indicating the event associated with the component (127) is generated. Further, a user-interface is provided on a client device (120) for enabling a user to interact with the work order. Based on the interaction of the user with the user-interface provided, a user-intent is captured. Further, one or more actions are performed on the client device (120) based on the captured user-intent.

Description

DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR A SIGNALING SYSTEM The present invention relates to data management, and in par- ticular relates to a data management system for signaling systems in rail infrastructure. Signaling engineers rely on a Book-of-circuits for performing operation or maintenance activities on rail infrastructure. The Book-of-circuits (BoC) is a physical document comprising engineering information related to hardware, cabinets, room plans, Input/Output cards, circuit diagrams etc., related to a signaling system. The BoC typically consists of hundreds of pages thereby mak- ing it practically difficult for a signaling engineer to nav- igate through various sections in the BoC. Further, it is also challenging to identify issues in the signaling system physically and to locate the corresponding documentation from the BoC. This may result in delays with respect to rectifica- tion of the issues. Further, when a device within the signal- ing system fails, a device failure alert is generated. How- ever, the device failure alert does not indicate which of the devices within the signaling system have failed. Conse- quently, the signaling engineer may face difficulty in iden- tifying the device based on circuit diagrams. This may also increase the downtime of the signaling system. In case the device is wrongly diagnosed, extra efforts are required to rectify the issue. Wrong diagnosis may also lead to safety hazards. In light of the above, there exists a need for managing engi- neering data of a signaling system and for enabling signaling engineers to access the engineering data with ease during maintenance or operation. Disclosed herein is a data management system for signaling systems. The object of the present invention is achieved by a method for managing data associated with a signaling system as disclosed herein. The method comprises detecting, by a processing unit, an event associated with at least one compo- nent in a signaling system. In an embodiment, the step of de- tecting the event associated with the at least one component comprises receiving an alarm signal indicating a malfunction of the at least one component, from the signaling system. The method further comprises identifying at least one arti- fact associated with the component by traversing a plurality of artifacts corresponding to the signaling system, stored in a database. In an embodiment, the at least one artifact com- prises a digital BoC associated with one or more engineering objects related to the component, and metadata corresponding to the one or more engineering objects. It must be understood by a person skilled in the art that the term ‘artifact’ as used herein, may be denote one or more of engineering ob- jects, metadata associated with the engineering objects and the digit BoC. In an embodiment, the method may further com- prise generating the plurality of artifacts from one or more technical documents associated with the signaling system. Further, the database is updated based on the plurality of artifacts received. Advantageously, the present invention automatically identi- fies artifacts associated with the component upon detecting the event. Consequently, manual efforts for identifying the artifacts from paper-based legacy documents containing extra- neous information is not required. The method further comprises generating a work order indicat- ing the event associated with the component, based on the at least one artifact identified. In an embodiment, the step of generating the work order comprises identifying a template for the work order from a plurality of predefined templates, Further, the identified template is modified based on the one or more engineering objects and the metadata to create the work order. Advantageously, the present invention dynamically generates the work order by including additional information obtained from artifacts relevant to the component. In other words, ac- cess to the additional information provided along with the work order. The method further comprises providing a user-interface on a client device for enabling a user to interact with the work order. The method further comprises capturing a user-intent based on the interaction of the user with the user-interface provided. The method further comprises performing one or more actions on the client device based on the captured user-in- tent. In an embodiment, the user-intent corresponds to accessing the at least one artifact and performing the one or more ac- tions based on the user-intent comprises importing the at least one artifact to the client device. Further, the im- ported artifact is displayed on the user-interface of the client device. Advantageously, the present invention enables the user to se- lect artifacts from a set of artifacts for viewing on the client device. In another embodiment, the user-intent corresponds to finding a navigation route to the at least one component and perform- ing the one or more actions based on the captured user-intent comprises identifying location coordinates associated with the at least one component based on the at least one arti- fact. Further, the navigation route to the component is de- termined based on the location coordinates identified. The navigation route is further displayed on the user-interface. Advantageously, the present invention helps the user to navi- gate to an exact location of the component for manual inspec- tion of the component. In yet another embodiment, the user-intent corresponds to de- bugging a circuit diagram on a technical document associated with the signaling system and performing the one or more ac- tions based on the user-intent comprises receiving an image of the circuit diagram from the user via the user-interface. Further, the plurality of artifacts is traversed in the data- base to identify an artifact corresponding to the circuit di- agram. The identified artifact is further imported, from the database to the client device. Further, the image from the user is verified based on the imported artifact. Based on verification of the image, one or more annotations are ren- dered over the image on the user-interface. The one or more annotations indicate one or more discrepancies in the circuit diagram. Advantageously, the present invention enables debugging of circuit diagrams on legacy documents, without the need for manual efforts. More specifically, the annotations on the user-interface shows an exact location of the discrepancy in the circuit diagram, thereby saving time and efforts required for debugging. Disclosed herein is also an apparatus comprising one or more processing units, and a memory unit communicatively coupled to the one or more processing units. The memory unit com- prises a data management module stored in the form of ma- chine-readable instructions executable by the one or more processing units. The data management module is configured to perform method steps as described above. Disclosed herein is also a data management system for a sig- naling system. The data management system comprises at least one data source, at least one client device and at least one apparatus as described above. The apparatus is communica- tively coupled to the at least one data source and the at least one client device. In an embodiment, the at least one data source is configured to generate the plurality of arti- facts based on technical documents associated with the sig- naling system. Further, the data source uploads the plurality of artifacts to the apparatus. Disclosed herein is also a computer-readable medium, on which program code sections of a computer program are saved, the program code sections being loadable into and/or executable by a processing unit which performs the method as described above when the program code sections are executed. The realization of the invention by a computer program prod- uct and/or a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium has the advantage that computer systems can be easily adopted by installing computer program in order to work as proposed by the present invention. The computer program product can be, for example, a computer program or comprise another element apart from the computer program. This other element can be hardware, for example a memory device, on which the computer program is stored, a hardware key for using the computer program and the like, and/or software, for example a documentation or a software key for using the computer program. The above-mentioned attributes, features, and advantages of the present invention and the manner of achieving them, will become more apparent and understandable (clear) with the fol- lowing description of embodiments of the invention in con- junction with the corresponding drawings. The illustrated em- bodiments are intended to illustrate, but not limit the in- vention. The present invention is further described hereinafter with reference to illustrated embodiments shown in the accompany- ing drawings, in which: FIG 1A illustrates a block diagram of a data management sys- tem for a signaling system, in accordance with an em- bodiment of the present invention; FIG 1B illustrates a block diagram of an apparatus, in ac- cordance with an embodiment of the present invention; FIG 2 shows a flowchart of a method of generating artifacts associated with the signaling system, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; FIG 3 shows a graphical user-interface displaying an object hierarchy of engineering objects related to a signal- ing system, in accordance with an exemplary embodi- ment of the present invention; FIG 4 shows a flowchart of a method for enabling the data management system for the signaling system, in ac- cordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention; FIG 5 shows a flowchart of a method of providing access to the at least one artifact corresponding to the compo- nent based on user-intent, in accordance with an ex- emplary embodiment of the present invention; FIG 6 shows a flowchart of a method of providing a naviga- tion route to the at least one component based on user-intent, in accordance with an exemplary embodi- ment of the present invention; FIG 7 shows a flowchart of a method for debugging a circuit diagram on a paper-based BoC, in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention; FIG 8A illustrates a user-interface of a client device, in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the pre- sent invention; FIG 8B illustrates a user-interface of a client device, in accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the present invention; FIG 8C illustrates a user-interface of a client device, in accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the present invention; and FIG 8D illustrates a user-interface of a client device, in accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the present invention. Hereinafter, embodiments for carrying out the present inven- tion are described in detail. The various embodiments are de- scribed with reference to the drawings, wherein like refer- ence numerals are used to refer to like elements throughout. In the following description, for purpose of explanation, nu- merous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of one or more embodiments. It may be evident that such embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. FIG 1A illustrates a block diagram of a data management sys- tem 100 for a signaling system 105, in accordance with an em- bodiment of the present invention. The system 100 comprises at least one apparatus 110 communicatively coupled to at least one data source 115 and at least one client device 120 over a network 125. The network 125 is, for example, a wired network, a wireless network, a communication network, or a network formed from any combination of these networks. The data source 115 is configured to generate artifacts from technical documents comprising requirements or specifications associated with the signaling system 105. The artifacts in- clude engineering objects associated with at least one compo- nent 127 of the signaling system 105 and metadata correspond- ing to the engineering objects. In a preferred embodiment, the engineering objects of the signaling system 105 is gener- ated as an object hierarchy using known techniques such as document post processors. Further, the metadata is generated, in the form of a metadata file from the object hierarchy based on relationships between the engineering objects in the object hierarchy. The generation of metadata from the object hierarchy is explained in detail later with reference to FIG 2. The apparatus 110 comprises a processing unit 130, a memory 135, a storage unit 140, a communication unit 145, a network interface 150, an input unit 155, an output unit 160, a standard interface or bus 165 as shown in FIG 1B. The appa- ratus 110 can be a (personal) computer, a workstation, a vir- tual machine running on host hardware, a microcontroller, or an integrated circuit. As an alternative, the apparatus 110 can be a real or a virtual group of computers (the technical term for a real group of computers is “cluster”, the tech- nical term for a virtual group of computers is “cloud”). The term ‘processing unit‘, as used herein, means any type of computational circuit, such as, but not limited to, a micro- processor, a microcontroller, a complex instruction set com- puting microprocessor, a reduced instruction set computing microprocessor, a very long instruction word microprocessor, an explicitly parallel instruction computing microprocessor, a graphics processor, a digital signal processor, or any other type of processing circuit. The processing unit 130 may also include embedded controllers, such as generic or pro- grammable logic devices or arrays, application specific inte- grated circuits, single-chip computers, and the like. In gen- eral, the processing unit 130 may comprise hardware elements and software elements. The processing unit 130 can be config- ured for multithreading, i.e., the processing unit 130 may host different calculation processes at the same time, exe- cuting the either in parallel or switching between active and passive calculation processes. The memory 135 may include one or more of a volatile memory and a non-volatile memory. The memory 135 may be coupled for communication with the processing unit 130. The processing unit 130 may execute instructions and/or code stored in the memory 135. A variety of computer-readable storage media may be stored in and accessed from the memory 135. The memory 135 may include any suitable elements for storing data and ma- chine-readable instructions, such as read only memory, random access memory, erasable programmable read only memory, elec- trically erasable programmable read only memory, hard drive, removable media drive for handling compact disks, digital video disks, diskettes, magnetic tape cartridges, memory cards, and the like. The memory 135 comprises a data management module 170 config- ured for managing engineering data associated with the sig- naling system 105. The data management module 170 further comprises an event detection module 172, a traversal module 174, work order generation module 176, user-interface (UI) generator module 178, intent identification module 180 and action module 182. The event detection module 172 is configured to detect an event associated with at least one component 127 in the sig- naling system 105. The traversal module 174 is configured to traverse a plurality of artifacts corresponding to the sig- naling system 105 to identify at least one artifact associ- ated with the component 127. The work order generation module 176 is configured to generate a work order indicating the event associated with the component 127, based on the at least one artifact identified. The UI generator module 178 is configured to provide a user-interface on the client device 120 for enabling a user to interact with the work order. The intent identification module 180 is configured to capture a user-intent based on the interaction of the user with the user-interface provided. The action module 182 is configured to perform one or more actions on the client device 120 based on the captured user-intent. The data management module 170 may be stored in the memory 135 in the form of machine-readable instructions and executa- ble by the processing unit 130. These machine-readable in- structions when executed by the processing unit 130 causes the processing unit 130 to manage engineering data of signal- ing system 105. The storage unit 140 comprises a non-volatile memory which stores predefined templates for work orders. The storage unit 140 further comprises a database 185 configured to store the object hierarchy, the metadata and a digital BoC generated based on the object hierarchy. In addition, the database 185 also stores historic maintenance data associated with each component of the signaling system 105. The historic mainte- nance data is updated by maintenance personnel via their re- spective client device upon resolving an event. For example, the historic maintenance data may include a severity of the event associated with the component 127, maintenance actions taken for the event, probable causes associated with the event and estimated time for resolving the event. The his- toric maintenance data may be categorized based on the type of event and identifiers corresponding to each of the compo- nents, in a lookup table. The input unit 155 may include in- put means such as keypad, touch-sensitive display, camera, etc., capable of receiving input signal. The bus 165 acts as interconnect between the processing unit 130, the memory 135, the storage unit 140, and the network interface 150. The out- put unit 160 may include output means such as displays. The communication unit 145 enables the apparatus 110 to com- municate with the data source 115 and the client device 120. The communication unit 145 may support different standard communication protocols such as Transport Control Proto- col/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Profinet, Profibus, and In- ternet Protocol Version (IPv). In an alternate embodiment, functions of the at least one ap- paratus 110 may be distributed between a file server, a data- base server and an application server. The data source 115 uploads digital BOC and metadata corresponding to a plurality of technical documents to the file server. The database server stores the engineering objects along with references to the respective digital BoC and metadata. The application server may be used to host additional services for consumer applications running on the client device 120. Those of ordinary skilled in the art will appreciate that the hardware depicted in FIGS 1A & 1B may vary for different im- plementations. For example, other peripheral devices such as an optical disk drive and the like, Local Area Network (LAN)/ Wide Area Network (WAN)/ Wireless (e.g., Wi-Fi) adapter, graphics adapter, disk controller, input/output (I/O) adapter, network connectivity devices also may be used in ad- dition or in place of the hardware depicted. The depicted ex- ample is provided for the purpose of explanation only and is not meant to imply architectural limitations with respect to the present disclosure. FIG 2 shows a flowchart of a method 200 of generating arti- facts associated with the signaling system 105, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. In the present embodiment, the artifacts are generated by the data source 115. At step 205, a technical document associated with the signaling system 105 is received as input. For example, the technical document may be scanned and uploaded to the data source 115 by a human operator. In another example, the human operator may provide an input indicating location of the technical document in a data repository. The technical docu- ment may be associated with specifications of the signaling system 105, including but not limited to, engineering of track layouts, route tables, cabinet configurations, track circuits and IP address configurations. The technical docu- ment may be in the form of a scanned image of a paper docu- ment, a PDF file, an XML file etc. At step 210, the technical document is parsed to generate a plurality of artifacts. The technical document may be parsed using an automated workflow trained to identify text, images and annotations. For example, AI/ML algorithms based on Con- volutional Neural Networks (CNN) and semantic models may be used to parse the technical documents. In an implementation, file-formats such as RailML may be employed for parsing of the technical document. During parsing, a plurality of engi- neering objects is identified from the technical document. Non-limiting examples of an engineering object includes track layouts, route tables, room plans, cabinet configurations, circuit diagrams, specifications of I/O cards, IP address configurations, hardware specifications, interlocking plans, connector datasheets and abbreviations used for names of com- ponents of the signaling system. The engineering objects are generated as an object hierarchy. The term ‘object hierarchy’ as used herein refers to a representation of the engineering objects using parent-child relationships. More specifically, a child object that descends from a parent object in the ob- ject hierarchy indicates a component or a related artifact of the parent object. In other words, the object hierarchy is indicative of relationships between the engineering objects. FIG 3 shows a graphical user-interface 300 displaying an ob- ject hierarchy of engineering objects related to a signaling system, in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. The object hierarchy shows a first parent object ‘Interlocking’ 305 that has a child object ‘Station’. Further, ‘Station’ 310 is the parent object to four child ob- jects: ‘Electronics’ 315, ‘OCS’ 320, ‘Indoor Unit’ 325 and ‘Outdoor Unit’ 330 at the next sub-level. Similarly, each of the child objects may have further child objects. The object hierarchy is further used to generate a digital Book-of-Circuits (BoC). The digital BoC is a digital document that contains a plurality of pages comprising the engineering objects identified from the technical document. The digital BoC also includes references that indicate relationships be- tween the engineering objects. In other words, the digital BoC is a human-readable format of the object hierarchy. The digital BoC may be used by a railway personnel similar to a paper-based BoC. At step 215, the document post processor further identifies dependencies between the engineering objects based on the ob- ject hierarchy and attributes associated with the engineering objects. Further, metadata is generated based on the identi- fied dependencies between the engineering objects and proper- ties associated with the engineering objects. The metadata may comprise descriptive metadata and structural metadata. The descriptive metadata includes at least tags or keywords that enable identification of the corresponding engineering object. Similarly, the structural metadata indicates at least a relationship between the engineering objects in the object hierarchy. In an example, the metadata may include a list of engineering objects, connection information in case of wired objects and a list of drawings associated with the at least one section of the digital BoC. For example, a first section may corre- spond to indoor circuits and a second section may correspond to outdoor circuits. Each of the sections may be further identified in the metadata using grouping details such as tags. The term ‘list’ as used herein refers to a data struc- ture that links various entities by storing an ordered se- quence of related entities. Further, the metadata may also include linked objects that store page numbers or references to engineering objects in the digital BoC. Similarly, details corresponding to each of the engineering objects are present in the metadata. For example, metadata of an engineering ob- ject may include list of drawings associated with the engi- neering object, location coordinates of a component corre- sponding to the engineering object. Further, the engineering object may also be grouped using tags in the respective metadata. The metadata may be generated in the form of en- crypted files, for example, in XML format. The digital BoC (or the object hierarchy) along with the metadata are further exported to the apparatus 110. The appa- ratus 110 stores the digital BoC and the metadata in a shared storage space that may be accessed by the client device 120. In an embodiment, the client device 120 accesses the digital BoC and the metadata via REST APIs. More specifically, the client device 120 hosts a user application that provides ac- cess to the digital BoC and the metadata stored on the appa- ratus 110. The user application may be one of a client-based application and a web-based application. FIG 4 shows a flowchart of a method 400 for enabling the data management system 100 for the signaling system 105, in ac- cordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present inven- tion. At step 405, an event associated with the at least one component 127 in the signaling system 105 is detected, by the processing unit 130. In an embodiment, the event is an alarm signal indicating malfunction of the component 127. The com- ponent 127 or a bigger system comprising the component 127 may be configured to generate the alarm signal in digital format when malfunction of the component 127 occurs. For ex- ample, the component 127 may malfunction due to failure, electrical faults, low battery levels etc. The alarm signal may also include other details, including but not limited to, an identification number of the component 127, a type of mal- function, a priority level etc. In an alternate embodiment, the event is detected in the form of a manual input received from the client device 120. For example, field personnel may manually update the event to the data management system 100 via the client device 120. At step 410, a plurality of artifacts corresponding to the signaling system 105, stored in the database 185, is trav- ersed to identify at least one artifact associated with the component 127. The artifacts include digital BoCs generated based on engineering objects associated with the signaling system 105, and metadata corresponding to the engineering ob- jects. The metadata indicates relationships between engineer- ing objects in the digital BoC as explained with reference to FIG 2. In an embodiment, metadata associated with each of the engi- neering objects is iteratively traversed to identify engi- neering objects related to the component 127 within the digi- tal BoC. The engineering objects may be associated with cir- cuit diagrams, logs, manuals etc. of the component 127. In an implementation, the metadata is queried using a query gener- ated based on the event. For example, the query may be gener- ated in a suitable query language based on the identification number of the component 127 present in the alarm signal. Fur- ther, metadata corresponding to the component 127 is identi- fied from a metadata file. In the present embodiment, the metadata file is an XML file as described earlier with refer- ence to FIG 2. In an implementation, the metadata file may store the metadata in the form of a metadata tree. The metadata tree is traversed iteratively starting from a root node of the metadata tree, to identify metadata corresponding to the component 127. Based on the metadata, corresponding engineering objects are located within the digital BoC. For example, page numbers present in the metadata may be used to locate the engineering objects. At step 415, a work order indicating the event associated with the component 127 is generated based on the at least one artifact identified. The work order includes an indication of the event associated with the component 127 and additional information about the component 127 derived from the at least one artifacts identified in step 410. The additional infor- mation enables a maintenance personnel to rectify an issue, i.e., the event, associated with the component 127. For exam- ple, the additional information may include such as circuit diagrams, manuals, logs, hardware specifications, specifica- tions related to Input/Output cards, room plans, location co- ordinates etc., associated with the component 127. The work order is generated based on predefined templates stored in the storage unit 140. Firstly, a template is selected from the predefined templates based on a nature of the event. Fur- ther, the identified template is modified based on the at least one artifact associated with the component 127. The en- gineering objects along with the corresponding metadata are embedded in the identified template of the work order. In ad- dition, the work order may also include information derived based on historic maintenance data of the component 127. For example, the historic maintenance data is identified from a lookup table based on the type of the event and an identifier of the component. In an example, the work order may include details such as, but not limited to, severity level of the event, maintenance actions corresponding to the event, proba- ble causes of the event, location associated with the compo- nent 127, specifications of the component 127 and estimated time for resolving the event. Upon generating the work order, the client device 120 is identified from a list of client devices associated with the signaling system 105, stored in the storage unit 140. In an implementation, the client device 120 is identified based on if the component 127 is within a specific geographical zone, a client device associated with the geographical zone is identified. In an example, the client device 120 is associ- ated with a maintenance personnel dedicated to the geographic zone. In another implementation, the real-time locations of client devices may be used to identify the client device 120 closest to the location of the component 127. For example, in case of issues with top priority level, the client device 120 of a maintenance personnel closest to the location of the component 127 is identified. In yet another implementation, the client device 120 may be identified based on the type of malfunction of the component 127. For example, a first client device is identified in case of electrical faults, a second client device is identified in case of mechanical failures and so on. At step 420, a user-interface is provided on the client de- vice 120 for enabling a user to interact with the work order. In the present embodiment, the user is a maintenance person- nel. The user-interface is provided using a user application installed on the client device 120. In an implementation, the user application may indicate arrival of the work order to the user, through a notification message. For example, the notification message may be a pop-up message with the text ‘New work order received’ along with an audio tone. The user may further click on the notification message in order view the work order. In an implementation, the user may be firstly authenticated via an authentication mechanism on the client device 120 before providing access to the work order. For ex- ample, a multifactor authentication mechanism may be used to authenticate an identity of the user. Upon successful authen- tication, the user-interface for interacting with the work order is provided or displayed on the client device 120. At step 425, a user-intent is captured based on the interac- tion of the user with the user-interface provided. The inter- action may include clicking or tapping on one or more tabs on the user-interface, scrolling, entering a search string etc. For example, the user-intent may be determined based on type and sequence of interaction with the user-interface. At step 430, one or more actions are performed on the client device 120 based on the captured user-intent. FIG 5 shows a flowchart of a method 500 of providing access to the at least one artifact corresponding to the component 127 based on user-intent, in accordance with an exemplary em- bodiment of the present invention. Here, the user-intent may be captured in the form of a user-selection on the user-in- terface. At step 505, the at least one artifact is imported to the client device 120. At step 510, the at least one arti- fact is displayed on the user-interface of the client device 120. FIG 6 shows a flowchart of a method 600 of providing a navi- gation route to the at least one component 127 based on user- intent, in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. At step 605, location coordinates associ- ated with the at least one component 127 are identified from the at least one artifact identified at step 410 of method 400. More specifically, the location coordinates are identi- fied from the metadata. At step 610, the navigation route is determined from the location coordinates identified. At step 615, the navigation route is displayed on the user-interface of the client device 120. FIG 7 shows a flowchart of a method 700 for debugging a cir- cuit diagram on a paper based BoC, in accordance with an ex- emplary embodiment of the present invention. At step 705, an image of the circuit diagram from the user is received via the user-interface. At step 710, the plurality of artifacts in the database 185 are traversed to identify an artifact corresponding to the circuit diagram. At step 715, the iden- tified artifact is imported from the database 185, to the client device 120. At step 720, the image from the user is verified based on the imported artifact. At step 725, one or more annotations are rendered over the image on the user-in- terface based on verification of the input. The one or more annotations denote one or more discrepancies in the circuit diagram. FIG 8A shows a user-interface 805 of the user application displayed on the client device 120, in accordance with an ex- emplary embodiment of the present invention. In the present embodiment, the user-intent corresponds to accessing addi- tional information associated with a work order. The addi- tional information may be displayed to the user on the user- interface based on the user’s interacts with the user-inter- face. For example, the sequence may denote the order in which the user perform actions such as tap, scroll, zoom or pinch on the user-interface 805. The user-interface 805 displays a plurality of items 810: ‘issue 1‘, ‘issue 2’ and ‘issue 3’. Each of the items denote a work order that enables the user to attend to an event in the signaling system 105. The user may select the first work order by clicking on, item ‘issue 1’, followed by tapping the ‘Open’ tab 815. Upon selection, details of the first work order, i.e., issue 1, are displayed on the user-interface 805 as shown in FIG 8B. In the present example, the additional information in- cludes circuit diagrams 820, manuals 825 and logs 830 of the component 127, identified at step 410 of method 400. Further, the user-interface 805 also enables the user to navigate rel- evant pages of the digital BoC. For example, the user may se- lect a ‘View’ tab 835 on the user-interface 805. Upon select- ing ‘View’ tab 835, the digital BoC is opened in a file-view- ing application such as PDF. For example, a page of the digi- tal BoC containing circuit diagrams of the component 127 may be displayed in a PDF viewer as shown in FIG 8C. Further, the user may filter or navigate through pages of the digital BoC based on tags or keywords. For example, the tags may include ‘Relays’ 840, ‘Cabinets’ 845, ‘Rooms’ 850, ‘BOM’ 855 etc. as shown in FIG 8C. The user may further choose to see engineering objects of the signaling system 105 categorized under the tags. The user may navigate by tapping on a tag of interest. For example, the user may tap on ‘Relays’ tab 840 in order to see circuit dia- grams of relays corresponding to the component 127. In an- other example, if the user taps ‘Cabinets’ tab 845, the user application identifies, from the digital BoC, all engineering objects associated with the component 127, that are associ- ated with the tag ‘Cabinets‘. For example, the engineering objects may include circuit diagram associated with one or more sub-components of the cabinet associated with the compo- nent 127. More specifically, metadata of the engineering ob- jects are queried to determine whether at least one of the tags in the metadata match with ‘Cabinets’. If the tag matches, the corresponding engineering objects are imported to the client device 120 and displayed to the end-user on the user-interface 805. The user may further interact with each of the engineering objects for example, by zooming, pinching, swiping, sliding or scrolling. Similarly, the user may choose to view room layout or Bill of Materials (BOM) associated with the signaling system 105 by taps on ‘Rooms’ tab 850 or ‘BOM’ tab 855 respectively. In another embodiment, the user may perform a search based on the tag, by using at least a portion of the tag as search string. The user may tap the ‘Filter’ tab 857 as shown in FIG 8C to search for a tag. Upon tapping ‘Filter’ tab 857, the user-interface 805 provides an option for the user to enter the search string. For example, the user types the search string ‘track layout’ to view pages of the digital BoC that include track layouts. In an implementation, the user-intent may be associated with importing or downloading the artifacts associated with the component 127 to the client device 120 for offline-viewing. For example, the user may single-tap on a ‘Go offline’ tab (not shown) on the user-interface to import the artifacts to the client device 120. Further, the user may choose to view the engineering objects and the digital BoC stored on the ap- paratus 110 in real-time, by tapping once on a ‘Go online’ tab 860. Further, the user may navigate through the artifacts displayed on the user-interface 805 for detailed inspection by moving using a rectangular highlight box 863. The user may press and slide the highlight box 863 over areas of interest within the displayed artifact for detailed or exploded views. Referring back to FIG 8B, the user-interface 800 includes a ‘Navigate’ tab 865. The user may tap on the ‘Navigate’ tab 865 to navigate to a geographical location of the component 127. More specifically, a GPS location associated with the component 127 is identified based on location coordinates in- dicated by metadata associated with the corresponding engi- neering object. When the user taps on the ‘Navigate’ tab 865, a navigation route to the location of the component 127 is identified. In an embodiment, the navigation route is deter- mined by invoking a navigation application such as Google Maps, Waze etc., through application programming interface (API). The API passes the location coordinates of the compo- nent 127 as input to the navigation application. The naviga- tion route thus determined is further displayed to the user on the user-interface 800. Further, the user may conclude the work order upon rectifying the issue, by tapping on the ‘Re- solve’ tab 870. Upon selecting ‘Resolve’ 870, the user-inter- face 800 is adapted to remove the work order corresponding to ‘Issue 1’ from the plurality of items 810. The user-interface 800 may also provide an option to the user to update infor- mation corresponding to the maintenance action, such as se- verity level of the event, maintenance actions taken, cause of the event, resolution time etc. Further, a status of the issue including the updated information may be communicated to the apparatus 110. Upon receiving the status, the appa- ratus 110 may update historic maintenance data of the signal- ing system 105. More specifically, the historic maintenance data corresponding to the component 127 is updated. In an implementation, the user may scan the circuit diagram on a physical BoC 880 using the client device 120 to debug the circuit diagram. For example, the user may firstly select the ‘Debug’ tab 875 in the user-interface 805, as shown in FIG 8C, to activate a rear-camera of the client device 120. Further, the user application may allow the user to scan the circuit diagram on the physical BoC 880 using the rear-camera as shown in FIG 8D. In another implementation, the user may upload an image of the circuit diagram to the user applica- tion using the rear-camera of the client device 120. Option- ally, the user may also provide additional details such as an identification number associated with the component corre- sponding to the circuit diagram. In an embodiment, the user application may automatically detect the identification num- ber from the circuit diagram using Optical Character Recogni- tion. Further, the apparatus 110 may identify a page in the digital BoC comprising the engineering object corresponding to the circuit diagram. Further, the apparatus 110 compares the circuit diagram in the physical BoC 880 with the page of the digital BoC to identify discrepancies in the circuit dia- gram. In an embodiment, the circuit diagram in the physical BoC 880 is compared with the circuit diagram in the digital BoC using pixel-by-pixel comparison. Based on the discrepan- cies, annotations are generated on the user-interface 805, for indicating the one or more discrepancies on the circuit diagram in the physical BoC 880. For example, overlaid anno- tations 885 highlighting the discrepancy is displayed over the scanned circuit diagram at a position on the user-inter- face 805 where the discrepancy is identified as shown in FIG 8D. The annotations may be provided in real-time using tech- niques such as augmented reality. In another embodiment, the user may scan a code such as a bar code or QR code on the paper based BoC using the camera of the client device 120 to access the corresponding digital BoC. In another embodiment, the one or more actions may in- clude performing an impact analysis on the signaling system 105 based on changes in one or more components. The impact analysis may be performed by identifying components that may have parent/child relationships with the component 127. Advantageously, the present invention aids centralized man- agement of information related to a signaling system with the help of a centralized server. The present invention also ena- bles signaling engineers to access the information with ease during maintenance or operation without having to rely on pa- per based BoC. The present invention is not limited to a particular computer system platform, processing unit, operating system, or net- work. One or more aspects of the present invention may be distributed among one or more computer systems, for example, servers configured to provide one or more services to one or more client computers, or to perform a complete task in a distributed system. For example, one or more aspects of the present invention may be performed on a client-server system that comprises components distributed among one or more server systems that perform multiple functions according to various embodiments. These components comprise, for example, executable, intermediate, or interpreted code, which communi- cate over a network using a communication protocol. The pre- sent invention is not limited to be executable on any partic- ular system or group of system, and is not limited to any particular distributed architecture, network, or communica- tion protocol. While the invention has been illustrated and described in de- tail with the help of a preferred embodiment, the invention is not limited to the disclosed examples. Other variations may be deducted by those skilled in the art without leaving the scope of protection of the claimed invention.

List of reference numerals 100 data management system 105 signaling system 110 apparatus 115 data source 120 client device 125 network 130 processing unit 135 memory 140 storage unit 145 communication module 150 network interface 155 input unit 160 output unit 165 standard interface or bus 170 data management module 172 event detection module 174 traversal module 176 work order generation module 178 user-interface (UI) generator module 180 intent identification module 182 action module 185 database

Claims

Patent claims 1. A computer-implemented method for managing data associ- ated with a signaling system, the method comprising: detecting, by a processing unit (130), an event asso- ciated with at least one component (127) in a signaling system (105); identifying at least one artifact associated with the component (127) by traversing a plurality of artifacts cor- responding to the signaling system (105), stored in a data- base (185); and generating a work order indicating the event associ- ated with the component (127), based on the at least one artifact identified; providing a user-interface on a client device (120) for enabling a user to interact with the work order; capturing a user-intent based on the interaction of the user with the user-interface provided; and performing one or more actions on the client device (120) based on the captured user-intent. 2. The method according to claim 1 further comprising: generating the plurality of artifacts from one or more technical documents associated with the signaling system (105); and updating the database (185) based on the plurality of artifacts received. 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein detecting the event associated with the at least one component (127) in the signaling system (105) comprises: receiving an alarm signal indicating a malfunction of the at least one component (127), from the signaling sys- tem (105). 4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the at least one artifact comprises a digital BoC associated with one or more engineering objects related to the component (127), and metadata corresponding to the one or more engineering objects. 5. The method according to claim 1 and 4, wherein generating the work order indicating the event associated with the component (127) based on the at least one artifact identi- fied comprises: identifying a template for the work order from a plu- rality of predefined templates; and modifying the identified template based on the one or more engineering objects and the metadata to create the work order. 6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the user-intent corresponds to accessing the at least one artifact, and wherein performing the one or more actions based on the user-intent comprises: importing the at least one artifact to the client de- vice (120); and displaying the imported artifact on the user-interface of the client device (120). 7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the user-intent corresponds to finding a navigation route to the at least one component (127), and wherein performing the one or more actions based on the captured user-intent comprises: identifying location coordinates associated with the at least one component (127) based on the at least one ar- tifact; determining the navigation route to the component (127) based on the location coordinates identified; and displaying the navigation route on the user-interface. 8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the user-intent corresponds to debugging a circuit diagram on a technical document associated with the signaling system (105), and wherein performing the one or more actions based on the user-intent comprises: receiving an image of the circuit diagram from the user via the user-interface; identifying an artifact corresponding to the circuit diagram by traversing the plurality of artifacts in the database (185); importing the identified artifact, from the database (185) to the client device (120); verifying the image from the user based on the im- ported artifact; and rendering one or more annotations over the image on the user-interface based on verification of the image, wherein the one or more annotations denote one or more discrepancies in the circuit diagram. 9. An apparatus (110) for managing data associated with a signaling system (105) comprising: one or more processing units (130); and a memory unit (135) communicatively coupled to the one or more processing units (130), wherein the memory unit (135) comprises a data management module (170) stored in the form of machine-readable instructions executable by the one or more processing units (130), wherein the data management module (170) is configured to perform method steps according to any of the claims 1 to 8. 10.A data management system (100) for a signaling system (105), the system comprising: at least one data source (115); at least one client device (120); and at least one apparatus (110) as claimed in claim 8 communicatively coupled to the at least one data source (115) and the at least one client device (120), wherein the apparatus (110) is configured to perform method steps in accordance with any of the claims 1 to 8. 11.The data management system (100) according to claim 9, wherein the at least one data source (115) is configured to: generate the plurality of artifacts based on one or more technical documents associated with the signaling system (105); and upload the plurality of artifacts to the apparatus (110). 12. A computer-program product having machine-readable in- structions stored therein, which when executed by one or more processing units (130), cause the processing units (130) to perform a method according to any of the claims 1 to 8. 13. A computer readable medium on which program code sections of a computer program are saved, the program code sections being loadable into and/or executable in a apparatus (110) to make the apparatus (110) execute the method of any one of the claims 1 to 8 when the program code sections are executed in the data management system.