Project description
The future of Europe’s rail
The EU-funded FLEX-RAIL project envisions a lean, integrated and flexible framework to ensure that Europe’s railway sector is on track to meet future transportation. To foresee eventual technical failures, FLEX-RAIL will re-elaborate pertinent trends, influencing factors, novelties and previous projects on the blue-sky transport system. The development of a future railway system scenario based on the involvement of the users of railways will be based on the analysis of trends and novelties in other transport sectors. The project will identify business feasibility possibilities, analyse disruptive technologies as well as digitalisation effects on safety.
Objective
Project FLEX-RAIL has the vision to target a lean, integrated and flexible railway system, which will stimulate further innovation within the rail sector and will ensure that rail services can address the future user needs. To achieve this, the following objectives and actions are defined:
To have a Forecast of evolution of key fundamental technologies, identification of technical risks and of potential blocking points project FLEX_RAIL will review relevant existing and upcoming trends, influencing factors, innovations & earlier projects on blue-sky transport system.
To look forward the possible achievement of the following future impacts the definition and implementation of a impact assessment framework and modelling tool for the defined rail scenario and transition pathways will be done.
To formulate technological concepts a future rail system scenario will be developed based on a participatory process involving all users of the rail system.The scenario will build on the analysis of trends and innovations happening in other transport sectors and of railways sector blue-sky projects and disruptive technologies.
Assessment of the scenario feasibility, considering the transition pathways, the potential business models and the governance processes will be done to the:
• Identification of key aspects for business feasibility
• Analysis of the current safety requirements and how the introduction of “train-centric” automated concept, the introduction of disruptive technologies and the digitalisation affect will change the railway safety approach.
Conclusions, recommendations and implications for the S2R activities will end the project.
Maximisation of impact will be achieved by interaction with other projects and dissemination with the objective to maximise the impact of the project amongst the rail sector and wider society thru co-operation with all existing bodies, parallel H2020 and S2R projects, scientific journals, trade publications.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
Shift2Rail-RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
8020 Graz
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.