A body of the European Union
A body of the European Union
Shift2Rail’s project PLASA-2 held its final conference on 12 January 2021. The virtual event was organised in 2 sessions – the morning session focused on CCA Work Area Smart Planning and the afternoon session on Virtual Certification. Both sessions attracted more than 50 participants, connected from 11 different countries and representing 25 companies.
The morning session presented the PROTON simulation tool which was developed under Shift2Rail’s Work Area investigating Smart Planning. It allows to predict the impact of timetable and infrastructure restrictions (such as construction sites) on expected punctuality on large railway networks within a short period of time. The tool can be applied for short and midterm timetable planning in order to identify potentially critical situations in the plan. The demonstration activities were carried out in the German network. In the FR8Rail project, Trafikverket is assessing the applicability of the tool on their network.
Jürgen Ernst, the Project Coordinator of PLASA-2 stated: “The PROTON simulation tool development wouldn’t have been launched without the support of Shift2Rail. The further development of the product will continue with the aim to commercial application by 2023.”
During the afternoon session, the Virtual Certification Work Area experts presented the Generic Framework for a Mixed Virtual/Experimental Authorisation Process, which shall ultimately lead to a significant reduction in authorisation costs and duration. This generic framework consists of defining a three-step process to assess virtual testing and determine if it is acceptable for use in the authorisation of a system. The work performed in the project is expected to be transmitted to the CEN standardisation activities.
The presentations showed during the event, as well as the deliverables are available on the PLASA-2 website.