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The satellite Earth remote sensing (ERS) methods can play a significant role in the effective management organization for the systems having spatially distributed infrastructure. ERS methods provide prompt acquisition of information concerning the processes and phenomena on the territory of the system’s location. Such systems definitely include Russian Railways (JCS RZD) railway network. The technical possibility of organizing a permanent real-time use of satellite data for solving various tasks in JCS RZD branches and services has become available due to rapid growth in recent decades of the satellite systems’ capabilities, increasing availability of ERS data and data processing technologies. Their implementation requires the development of specialized technologies and systems for remote monitoring data and derived information processing, including harmonization of the obtained information with specific spatial data used in framework of Russian Railways’  information systems functioning. It also requires the creation of special data analysis tools for remote monitoring to solve the tasks of railway infrastructure monitoring. The creation of the elements of this technology was the aim of the joint project of  Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI), JSC «Research & Design Institute for Information Technology, Signalling and Telecommunications on Railway Transport» (JSC NIIAS) and the Branch of the Radioelectronics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FIRE RAS), which was conducted in 2013–2014 with support of the Russian Fund for Basic Research (RFBR) and JSC RZD (grant no. ofi_m_RZD 13-07-13168). The hereby paper is devoted to the description of the functioning prototype of the specialized information service RZD-SAT created in framework of the project. It provides acquisition and distributed  satellite data processing to meet the requirements of the railway infrastructure monitoring.
The paper discusses the main challenges and methodological issues related to the possibility of using the service for the organization of multi-level remote monitoring of railway infrastructure. Current capabilities of the service, its architecture, its construction features and examples of specialized tools for analysis of satellite data and derived products for railway infrastructure monitoring are described in the paper. The paper also discusses the possibility of using the RZD-SAT service to arrange the integration of various information obtained from the immediate remote monitoring data into the information space of JSC RZD.