Making railway interoperability more intelligent
Railway companies and train services have come a long way in addressing the needs of passengers and freight, seeking always to find more efficient ways to operate and minimise delays. However, infrastructure managers (IMs) and operating companies or railway undertakings (RUs) have become separate entities and may not be able to achieve advanced, synergistic improvements if they don't work closely together. The EU-funded project 'Intelligent integration of railway systems' (Integrail) aimed to strengthen information sharing between IMs and RUs, promoting management of the system in Europe as a united entity. As communication and information systems in railways become more complex, interoperability among different systems and across borders becomes an imperative, particularly if cutting-edge improvement is desired. Integrail designed a platform to integrate and manage different systems in a way that promotes evolution and improvement. Such a platform is based on a modular architecture of communication services and applications that effectively retrieve, analyse and exchange information when needed. This is powered by unified standard protocols and common language (middleware) to facilitate communication among applications. In addition, open interfaces and unified standards enable evolution and adaptation to emerging needs of rail systems. Such a platform promises to yield better monitoring systems, optimised maintenance, improved decision support and enhanced performance evaluation. The system can be implemented gradually and expand across Europe, ushering in a new era of collaboration between both sides of the rail system.
