RailPod Data Portal

Project Type: Website
Project Link: http://portal.rail-pod.com
Initial Release/Completion Date: December 2017
Technologies Used: Django, Python, PostgreSQL, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, REST/AJAX, JQuery, React
Tags: Professional Projects

This data portal displays railroad track inspection data collected by semi-autonomous vehicles. I developed this data portal while working as a Python and full stack developer for RailPod. It is active in production, and allows RailPod employees and their clients/customers to view and analyze many parameters and variables related to track safety, and aids in the identification of various flaws and defects requiring repair.

The site is built with Django and predominately React on the frontend, along with other various JavaScript libraries and components such as HighCharts, Leaflet, and Datatables. It can handle very large datasets by streaming data on demand, dynamically downsampling as required based on the zoom level selected. The map displays inspection routes and geotagged points, and the UI syncs the cursor location on the map with the other components, so that they all focus on the same point. Multiple data sets from different inspections over the same section of rail can be displayed overlapping. This allows for visual detection of rail wear trends over time. A custom UI component also displays rail profile data at regular intervals along the inspected route. This profile data is buffered and streamed on demand as it is a very large data set. PostgreSQL is used as the database, along with the postGIS extension to allow for geospatial queries and geotagged data.

I was the sole full stack developer on this project and it was developed over the course of a year. In addition to developing the site, I also set up and managed various AWS environments to deploy and test it on.