European Railway operators are under pressure to decrease their life cycle cost, to increase significantly their reliability and punctuality, to be more adaptive to different services. The European railway system remaining very fragmented in terms of technologies: the adoption of new technologies and the renewal of former technologies are not quick enough for the railway mode to answer correctly to the public policy needs. Research and innovation have a major part to play in responding to these needs by giving the right attention to data and data models and further to the definition of a global railway system architecture as it is developing in other transport modes and industries to support the necessary evolutions. A number of potential technology solutions emerged that could contribute to this radical improvement in terms of cost, capacity, reliability, efficiency, carbon emissions for a better service to rail customers. It is more and more largely accepted that the following innovations will lead to correct answers to the current concerns:
- Adoption of Functional Railway System Architecture to facilitate inter-connection of sub-systems and products from different manufacturers, to ease the evolution by a far quicker adoption of new technologies, to simplify the evolution, to improve the exchange of data in the overall system;
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Implementation of a “lean” railway system by harmonizing the equipment and sub-system variations;
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Fostering the implementation of well-defined applications by reducing functional overlapping;
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Promotion of technical interoperability;
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Achieving flexible architectures which are easy to adapt and able to comply with the requirements from all the stakeholders (infrastructure managers, railway undertakings, suppliers, etc.).
Concerning the adoption of functional railway system architecture, the challenge is very important due to the high rate of fragmentation of the railway system, especially in terms of regulations, operator’s specifications, the various generations of technical solutions, and the legacy systems in the long railway history. The increasing number of existing data models and architectures could generate confusion if not properly managed. Railway operators, infrastructure managers, railway manufacturing industry, national policy makers have developed their own models, for different subsystems. The first analysis and the comparison between all models lead to the following hypothesis:
The LinX4Rail project which started on December 1st, 2019 sets the grounds for a shared vision of the railway system architecture, as well as the development of the CDM (Conceptual Data Model) which will enable different simulation or operational subsystems to run together, which paves the way to building a shared and interoperable architecture.
The main first outputs coming from the on-going LinX4Rail project are:
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A S2R-CDM conceptual model, based on unified hierarchical and modular structure representing the subsystems or assemblies of the railway system, identifying the relations between them and providing a common language and data dictionary (object model library) to describe them;
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An agreed Governance Model of the S2R-CDM, which guarantees a unified development of the model and along with its sustainability;
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A first comprehensive architecture, mapping the technologies and strategy for the implementation of a new integrated railway system approach.
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The achievement of at least three demonstrators
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A common functional railway architecture vision, including exploration of new business model for the sustainability and strategy for deployment.
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Recommendations to the standardization bodies and the certification levels.
LinX4Rail-2 will continue and intensify the work started in LinX4Rail by bringing in further data models and architecture sources, therefore a close exchange of information and results and outcomes between the projects is expected. Only by combining the work and resources of the two projects, the expected results can be achieved which answer to the needs of the sector.
The objectives of the project LinX4Rail-2 are:
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To manage the follow-up of the existing work on System Architecture and Conceptual Data Model (CDM) carried out in the on-going LinX4Rail project, aiming at a large adoption for the European railways sector
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To ensure wider uptake of results from LinX4Rail by proving the performance of the proposal methodology and vision and by evaluating the impacts, taking into account the business case
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To establish a single ‘repository’ for System Architecture and CDM with a well-developed sustainability plan.
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To adopt a common vision for the functional railway vision able to transform the Europe railway system