Europe’s Rail leaders are speaking with one voice: the Joint Undertaking public-private partnership has proven to be a...
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ERA Ontology
Railway systems generate vast amounts of data, but data only creates value when it can be understood and used consistently across organisations, countries and applications.
The ERA Ontology provides a common language for railway data across Europe. It creates a shared model of railway infrastructure and operations, allowing different systems to describe, exchange and interpret information in a consistent way.
But data must not only be available, it must also be reliable. Through validation mechanisms, infrastructure data can be checked against the rules defined by the ontology, ensuring consistency, quality and trustworthiness. At the same time, different users, from planners and engineers to maintenance teams and operational systems, can access tailored views of the same data, extracting exactly the information they need for specific tasks.
Together, these elements help railway systems truly understand each other, supporting a more digital, efficient and interoperable European railway.
Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking (EU-Rail) has played a key role in clarifying the principles of the ERA Ontology and promoting its use. Through its System Pillar, EU-Rail has also developed an extension of the ontology for the Control, Command and Signalling (CCS) domain.
















