The purpose of this project is to contribute to knowledge on problems related to preservation, accessibility, searchability of digital information and digital records in large railway projects. The project aims to define a research area for further studies. The purpose of the project will be achieved by an explorative preliminary study of the Ådalsbanan project’s digital information management and digital records management needs.

Large railway projects such as the Västkustbanan, Bottniabanan and Ådalsbanan range over large geographical areas and involve many actors, both public and private. In large projects like these huge amounts of documents and records are created, which are crucial to the understandingand management of large railway projects and their physical assets. Today the majority of the documents and the records are created digitally, which makes the current and long-term management of them complex and complicated.

In digital information and in digital records, knowledge is embedded that can be of importance for as long as the railway exists and possibly even longer, for both Banverket’s business needs and for other future users, such as researchers. There has been very little research about how records management should work in complex and large projects and consequently knowledge in this area is very limited. This project aims to explore and define specific issues and questions about records management and access to records over the very long-term. These will then provide the basis for a future application for a full-scale research project.

The project will apply a qualitative research approach, and the expected result is a mapping of the problems and the needs of Banverket for digital information management and digital records management in large railway projects.