Rail Digital Twin and Deep Learning for Passenger Flow Prediction Using Mobile Data

Predicting passenger flows in rail transport systems plays an important role for traffic management centers to make fast decisions during service disruptions. This paper presents an innovative cross-disciplinary approach based on digital twins, deep learning, and traffic simulation to predict the total number of passengers in each train stations and evaluate the impact of service disruptions across stations. First, we present a four-layer system architecture for building a digital twin which ingests real-time data streams, including train movements and timetable scheduling. Second, we deploy several deep learning models to predict the total number of passengers in each station using mobile data. The results showcase significant accuracy for recurrent versus non-recurrent traffic conditions even under severe large disruptions such as the COVID-19 travel restrictions. Our case study of the Sydney rail network demonstrates that the proposed digital twin powered by deep learning can provide more granular real-time insights into the impact on passengers, allowing rail operation centers to better mitigate service disruptions.