The benchmark Basque technology center Tecnalia has been awarded, together with the company NEM Solutions, with the European Innovation Award for the development of a 4.0 failure prediction technology that applies Big Data in the railway and wind sectors. The award in the “Impact Delivered” category, given by the EARTO association in Brussels, recognizes the best technology transfer practice.

The awarded technology, called A.U.R.A., has been patented and industrialized by NEM Solutions in collaboration with Tecnalia. AURA. applies Big Data, which allows efficient management and intelligent analysis of large volumes of data, to predict expected behavior and detect future failures of key assets, such as wind turbines or train subsystems.

A.U.R.A, has already been implemented in the railway industry and wind energy sectors, with up to 63,000 connected assets worldwide that accumulate more than 80 million hours of operation. The technology monitors, for example, more than 18,000 train wheels every day.

In this way, in the railway sector, the system improves the safety and comfort of passengers, the punctuality of services, and increases the life of assets by up to 30%. In the wind energy sector, future failures have been detected up to a year in advance, confirming savings of several hundred thousand euros due to the timely detection of potentially catastrophic failures.