Project description
Climate-proofing Europe’s railways
Climate extremes such as heavy rainfall and drought may lead to complex thermal, hydraulic and mechanical responses of the soils below railway tracks. These hidden ground instabilities are placing Europe’s ageing railway infrastructure under growing pressure, deforming tracks and increasing failure risks that conventional inspection methods often fail to detect. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the GeoTwin4Rail project aims to develop a digital twin framework that integrates geotechnical modelling, physics-informed surrogate models and hybrid sensing technologies to assess railway earthworks in real-time. This will promote safer, more reliable and climate-resilient railway operations.
Objective
Europe operates one of the world's most extensive, dense, and ageing rail networks, and intensifying climate extremes are converting hidden geotechnical vulnerabilities into operational risk. In the predominantly unsaturated soils beneath tracks, coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) behaviours include rainfall-driven suction loss and pore pressure rise, drought-induced shrinkage and cracking, and thermal cycling that alters soil fabric and stiffness. These processes accelerate deformation and track geometry degradation and raise failure likelihood. Conventional point-based inspections seldom reveal where weakening starts or how it propagates across the network. Without THM-aware sensing and modelling at scale, operators lack timely visibility to anticipate the next extreme, leaving safety, reliability, and capacity persistently exposed.
GeoTwin4Rail will revolutionize the operations and maintenance of railway earthworks for climate change adaptation by uniquely integrating breakthrough innovation in advanced THM coupling modelling, novel physics-informed surrogate modelling, hybrid monitoring, and cutting-edge digital twin (DT) technologies. The Experienced Researcher (ER) will leverage her unique expertise in THM coupling modelling with domain experts to advance a connected DT framework to achieve real-time assessments of railway earthworks under extreme climatic conditions, which will provide actionable guidance for railway operation and maintenance, enhancing safety, reliability, and ride comfort for passengers in the EU.
Moreover, GeoTwin4Rail will serve as a scalable framework for global adoption, advancing resilient-infrastructure management and global climate-adaptation efforts. Through this work, the ER aims to consolidate her expertise in transportation geotechnics, specifically in THM monitoring and predictive maintenance, and to build a long-term academic career in Europe, delivering scalable solutions for climate-resilient railway systems.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences soil sciences
- engineering and technology environmental engineering geotechnics
- engineering and technology environmental engineering ecosystem-based management climate change adaptation
- engineering and technology civil engineering transportation engineering railroad engineering
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
B15 2TT Birmingham
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.