Pakistan Railways is a national state-owned company of Pakistan. Founded in 1886 it owns about 4,800 miles of track stretching all across the country. The freight business unit of the company accounted for more than 50% of the revenue transporting agricultural, industrial and imported goods from the two southern ports of the country to all the other parts. In order to improve the operations and further the revenue from their freight business, Pakistan Railways sought a solution to improve their fleet operations management and tracking.

A detailed research was conducted to evaluate how similar solutions were implemented in other countries and GPS over GSM network was the accepted solution. Custom dual SIM GPS over GSM devices were ordered for around 375 freight carrying locomotives in the fleet. Some remote parts of the country were not fully covered by any GSM network and for those areas a few special satellite based devices were commissioned.

To tackle this huge proposition Pakvista along with its partners built a solution comprising of four core components: GIS Mapping system, Data Aggregation server, web based control room application for real-time monitoring and reporting and installation of a customized GPS based hardware tracking device with satellite/GSM chip for data reporting. In order to visually show the live position of any locomotive and to assess its progress on a specified route, a digitized map of the tracks was a must. A detailed survey of fixed assets was conducted recording the results in the form of a customized digital map for the entire infrastructure, including tracks, railway stations, tunnels, bridges and level crossings etc. with standard mapping functions like zoom in/out and panning as well as performance optimization through tile caching. This in its own right was a huge effort and formed the backdrop for the operations control room application.

The live information for the various trains operating in the network was updated on this map and real time notifications were generated to mark the arrivals and departures from various stations. Customized views for control rooms in the seven operating zones of the railways were developed along with the support for remote login for authorized personnels of railways management. A SMS based query system was also developed and linked with this to entertain citizen queries for arrivals and departures of trains by routes.