EU-Rail's October 2024 newsletter has just been released, presenting updates in European rail research, policy, and...
EU-Rail October 2024 Newsletter: Strengthening Partnerships and Accelerating Innovation in European Rail
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Results Published in October 2024
Use cases for planned technical developments of the project
Description: The Flagship Project 1 (FP1) MOTIONAL aims to create seamless connectivity between different rail systems across Europe, fostering the development of a Single European Railway Area. This deliverable presents the new technical use cases proposed by this project and encloses an analysis of data availability in prototype environments. These 164 use cases provide a comprehensive overview and enable to identify key areas where technological advancements can address specific challenges, and therefore creating opportunities to improve rail capacities utilisation, operation, and service offer.
Target audience: Rail Stakeholders, Member States, Policy Makers
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: Building a Single European Railway Area is key in building a better rail for the European continent. This project also aims to drive a positive societal impact and to contribute to Europe’s railway technological advancements, to ultimately maintain Europe’s leading position in rail technologies.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 1 (FP1) MOTIONAL
Documentation of use cases for automating functions
Description: This deliverable contains a report about actual existing and specified automated functions, tasks or related use cases, a draft release for a set of documents, including analysis based on first input from the System Pillar and a definition or relevant use cases. This collaboration has reached its objective by capturing the high-level operational scenarios and use cases relevant for the Automating Functions Technical Enable, aiming to capture the operational rules and quantified conditions and the available experience among the Railways Undertakings. This document has four annexes.
Target audience: Rail Infrastructure Stakeholders, academics
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: This paper is important as it sets up the basis for the development of Technical Enablers (TEs) that are to come from further Work Packages in the Automation Processes Cluster. As this study applies for passenger, freight, and tramway, it lays the foundation for numerous studies and applications to come. It will therefore have an extensive impact within the European railway landscape and will have a significant implications for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in the EU.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 2 (FP2) R2DATO
Documentation of use cases for perception system
Description: This work sets up a sound structure to handle obstacle management in operations by examining use cases of 5 aspects of perception systems (i.e. obstacle detection, signal reading functionality, surveillance of locations associated with an increased risk for collision, detection of infrastructure defects and anomalies, and standard operations key use case automatic coupling).
Target audience: Rail Infrastructure Stakeholders, Academics
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: As the conducted study provides a definition of use cases, operational parameters, and scenarios for perception systems, it offers an important input for upcoming work packages and offers the right operational scenarios to focus on further development. This work brings the European Union closer to achieving better rail for our continent as autonomous trains and related technologies participate in making railway transport safer and more reliable. It is also crucial for the Union to keep its world leader position in this sector and therefore to be focused on new technologies.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 2 (FP2) R2DATO
ATO GoA3/4 specifications review documentation
Description: The objective of this deliverable is to review the available documentation on digital & automated (up to autonomous) train operations of precursor projects to fully investigate the existing proposals and comprehend the underlying rationale behind the choices made. Three themes are discussed in this paper: The analysis of architecture and specifications (in order to reach a consensus among basic operational principles), the emphasis on the gaps and possible improvements, and the focus on the relationships between automation processes components and several external technical enablers. The paper ultimately concludes that the railway sector is experiencing multiple initiatives that make it difficult to compare the outcomes. The next step would be to identify, which elements are already well-designed and which areas need improvement.
Target audience: Rail Infrastructure Stakeholders, Academics
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: An important task, which this study has achieved, is the compilation of data with key actors in the railway sector that will enable the consortium to have a holistic view of the different initiatives going on. This general overview will help to identify the encouraging sectors and the areas in difficulty. This deliverable should be seen as the basis of further studies that will eventually be the foundation of the train of tomorrow.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 2 (FP2) R2DATO
Documentation of use cases for remote driving
Description: This paper, which is the consequence of previous studies (i.e. from projects X2-RAIL-4 and TAURO) that permitted to craft an architecture for the autonomous train and to identify remote driving and remote driver lingering issues, drafts the first architectural context of these topics. It is based on several use cases and arises some of them where remote driver management becomes essential, for instance in degraded mode. This document gives a valid starting point for requirements specification activities and then on to the implementation of a prototype.
Target audience: Rail Stakeholders, Academics, Rail Freight Stakeholders
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: This project can help us to build a better rail system for Europe in many aspects. Firstly, making possible a remote intervention, the remote driving system can make railways transportation more reliable, for instance, by increasing its punctuality. Furthermore, by implementing digitalisation and automation on to the European railways, which are experiencing both an increasing demand for low-carbon transportation, especially from passengers, and an urgent need for improvement in their infrastructure, this deliverable provides a solid basis to address this challenge.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 2 (FP2) R2DATO
Documentation of freight specific user requirements for automation process
Description: This deliverable focuses on the tramway operational environment, which differs from mainline and therefore has its own use cases and user requirements. This study gathers documents defining harmonised urban use cases and operational rules for all relevant automation subproject technical enablers (e.g., automatic functions, autonomous operations, safe perception systems, remote driving, and telecommand). Indeed, there is no common view in Europe, as each local operator has its needs regarding its use cases, operational rules, and needs. After discussing commercial (e.g., operational, functional uses cases) and non-commercial (e.g., remote parking in depots, remote washing use-cases), this deliverable identifies several points that require attention.
Target audience: Rail Freight Stakeholders, Academics
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: As rail freight is one of the least polluting ways of transporting goods, it becomes a key aspect of European logistic’s decarbonisation. The European Union (EU) aims to become carbon neutral by 2050. This deliverable provides solid and consolidated documentation to better discuss how technology, digitalisation, and automation can make rail cargo more competitive. In the same manner, it explains and points out the main challenges the Automatic Train Operation (ATO) implementation will cause to the whole rail ecosystem.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 2 (FP2) R2DATO
Documentation of urban use cases and operational rules for automation process
Description: The user requirement scope of this deliverable is designed specifically for freight. In addition, a stakeholder analysis and the description of operational modes are presented in this document. This analysis identifies further works to be carried out, especially the definition of a common set of use cases, test, and validation cases, as well as hazard logs, that remain as open points for future projects. The study concludes that the Automatic Train Operation (ATO) as a commercial product poses great challenges to the whole railway sector.
Target audience: Rail Urban Stakeholders
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: European cities are shifting from car-friendly cities to alternative mobilities including public transport, that need to adapt to absorb the growing number of users. Technologies, at a European and harmonised scale, can help these companies to offer a better and more reliable service to their customers and to be more cost-efficient.
More information on this topic: Flagship Project 2 (FP2) R2DATO
Sustainable interiors, knowledge and opportunities intermediate report n°1
Description: The Rail4Earth project gathers world class partners and aims at making trains more sustainable addressing several topics, such as the decarbonisation of diesel trains, noise and vibrations reduction, energy savings, circular economy, resource consumption and resilience to climate change. This deliverable is dedicated to a state-of-the-art analysis on modularity, circular materials and design for railway and other sectors. It identifies the main technical and cost issues, but also the main potential opportunities deriving from the current European standards and compares existing possibilities with new potential offers to make train interiors more sustainable. The 5 Whys methodology was used to identify the main issues and challenges for interior designs based on modularity and circularity and highlighted the gap between what is done and what could be done. More in detail, four main challenges that could be overcome by applying biomimicry principles have been identified: Creation of circular seating, creation of lateral and ceiling structures with biobased/renewable materials, creation of circular flooring with biobased/renewable materials and adaptation of lay-out to seasonal demands (e.g. for bikes).
Target audience: Rail Stakeholders
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: This project supports improvements on several levels. From a global point of view, the project addresses several issues, such as CO2 emissions from diesel trains and noise reduction for local residents living close to the tracks. More specifically, this deliverable, which establishes a state of the art of existing solutions to make train interiors more sustainable, aims for example at limiting waste during wagon refurbishment and at incorporating circular economy in this field. From this perspective, the project contributes to building a more sustainable rail environment.
More information on this topic: Rail4Earth
Summary on EDDP programme, risk, and interface management I
Description: The DAC (Digital Automatic Coupling) is an innovative component to automatically couple and decouple the rolling stock of a freight train, both physically and digitally. The DACcord project aims at, with management competencies, providing an industrial migration roadmap to stakeholders. This deliverable describes the performed European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP) general and specific programme, risk deviation and interfaces management activities linked with DACcord Project work package 3 during its first reporting period. The deliverable depicts the main achievements in the overall EDDP management (e.g., the setting up of a first version of the so-called “General Master Plan”) and a proposal for DAC deployment structures and funding/financing mechanisms (linked to work package 11 of the DACcord project) and the next steps of the DACcord/EDDP programme management (e.g., refining the cost benefit analysis with benefits case studies and potentially regional analyses, and the seamless integration of future projects supporting the migration roadmap work areas).
Target audience: Rail Freight Stakeholders
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: The European Union (EU) is fully committed to lowering global greenhouse gas emissions, which is crucial to limit global warming. Indeed, the EU aims to be climate neutral by 2050. To achieve the goal of a decarbonised freight in Europe, rail cargo is essential. The DAC system addresses the need for rail freight to be more competitive by enabling its need to increase efficiency and transparency. Thanks to a cross-coordination with freight stakeholders, the DACcord undertaking aims at supporting Europe’s Rail to align with the different activities shaping the architectural and procedural DAC-related European Railway system.
More information on this topic: DACcord
Hazard identification and risk assessment
Description: The MaDe4Rail project aims to explore non-traditional and emerging Maglev Derived Systems (MDS) and to evaluate the technical feasibility and effectiveness to introduce MDS in Europe, under safety aspects and technical-economic performance. The deliverable illustrates the risk analysis conducted on the hybrid MDS within the project. These risks are inherent to the technological innovations introduced or, despite being present in traditional railways, change significantly due to the use of new technologies. This preliminary analysis does not reveal any insurmountable critical issues and provides a foundation upon which more detailed and specific risk assessments can be built as the technical solutions become clearer.
Target audience: Rail Stakeholders, Member States, Policy Makers
How it brings us closer to achieving better rail for Europe: The MaDe4Rail project is expected to have significant impacts such as contributing to the development of MDS, promoting more sustainable passenger and freight transport and initiating a path towards the reinforcement of railway as the backbone of a multimodal, sustainable, and efficient mobility network by possibly upgrading the existing railway lines/facilities through the adoption of a maglev-derived technology.
More information on this topic: MaDe5Rail