RFID in Rail : RFID tracing of rail-borne cargo

Abstract: SCA transports timber via rail from railway terminals in western Sweden to saw and/or pulp mills located on the east coast. Sometimes timber wagons are lost due to damages inflicted when loading the wagon. Wagons can also be decommissioned for maintenance conducted by the Swedish Transport Administration. Both situations are unpredictable and causes many types of problems. If the wagons could be automatically traced these problems could be predicted and pre-emptive actions could be taken. All wagons used by SCA are equipped with RFID tags and RFID readers are installed at the railway terminals. The purpose of this thesis is to equip the RFID readers with Internet access, collect the data read by the RFID readers and present this data in a single page web application. The actual data collection is done by an already existing system which pushes the train data to the back-end part of the application. The front-end part is made with a JavaScript framework named Ember.js and the back-end part is made with ASP .NET Web API and SQL Server. The application is finished and verified with various tests but is not put in production due to a negotiation delay between SCA with a third-party consultant.