D1.5 First KPI report

Rail freight transport faces a number of challenges, such as a lack of network capacity and productivity. Rail transport must use new digital technologies to meet the needs of customers. The Flagship Project FP5 – TRANS4M-R was launched to cope with these challenges. TRANS4M-R, a consortium project of the Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking EU-Rail JU) and funded within Flagship Area 5 of the Innovation Pillar, for a period from 2022 to 2026, will develop, validate, and demonstrate TRANS4M-R technical enablers (TE). 

This document constitutes Deliverable 1.5 “First KPI Report” of FP5 TRANS4M-R and provides an estimation of how the technical enablers of the project will impact the Key Performance Indicators (KPI), given in the Multi Annual Work Programme and further detailed out in the Grant Agreement of FP5 TRANS4M-R. To this aim, the relevant KPIs are first described in this deliverable for the project. Second, the methodology to map the KPIs to the different technical enablers is described. In the main part of this document, reference values are summarized which provide the basis for comparison for future improvements. These numbers consider the railway system of the years 2024 as baseline. It is important to concretely specify the measuring process of these reference values since future improvements can only be compared based on the same process.  

Based on these considerations, future improvements given as the impact of the technical enablers on improved KPIs are estimated. The presented KPI estimations reflect the target state of full digitization. The results shown in this deliverable give a first indication on which effects could be expected in the future. The presented values will be monitored continuously and validated in lab and field tests. For a harmonized approach, a strong collaboration with the work packages (WPs) on cost-benefit-analyses (WP19) and test planning and execution (WP13-WP18, WP20, WP21, WP24, WP33 and WP34) is crucial. A way of collaboration was set-up during the process of writing this deliverable.  

In the target process, a significant improvement compared to the baseline will be enabled by the technical enablers developed in FP5 TRANS4M-R. The estimated benefits presented in this document focus on non-disruptive processes. However, the technical enablers probably also will increase robustness of the processes at hand further improving the KPI on average. An assessment of the impact of an increased robustness on the KPI will only be possible in commercial use with a broad data base to reach a statistically valid assessment.