ENT21: Railway Research

Status

The topic of Railway research is being explored to defined topics and areas suited for trans-national funding initiatives.

Facts

  • Interested countries: Austria , Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, UK
  • Funding type: Open-call model
  • Themes: tbd.
  • Funding budget: will depend on the incoming proposals

If you have questions for the action please contact the Action Group support team: Oliver Althoff, TÜV Rheinland Consulting GmbH,  Oliver.Althoff[at]de.tuv.com

 

Background

For the railway sector European solutions and approaches become increasingly important. Single national solutions do in many cases no longer satisfy the needs of railway operators and industry but also not of the users.

 

Technical but also regulatory issues often need to be treated within an European framework. Interoperability needs to be ensured when new solutions should be brought on the track. Therefore for instance the preparation and implementation of new standards is of highest relevance for the further development of national and the European railways.

 

In the last decades the European Framework Program (FP) was the main program to fund trans-national railway research projects. But today, there is more and more evidence that the FP can only in a limited way satisfy the needs for public funds in railway research. From an idea that was born into the annual work program, to a call with subsequent evaluation and negotiation it can take several years until R&D projects can start. Actual demand of public funding can very often not be satisfied due to lacking funds and successful projects are often ineffective due to overloaded consortia and administrative obligations of the FP.

 

These circumstances do not only affect the interests of EU policies but also of national policies. Therefore, a joint funding option of national programs can serve to provide a new option for selected R&D projects that are of national interest.

 

Research themes (under development)

The following topics are under consideration:

Capacity

  • Improvement
  • Costs reduction

 

Interoperability of railway corridors

  • Length of trains
  • Communication between infrastructure manager and operators

 

Test facilities

  • Reducing costs
  • More virtual simulation
  • Common standards for virtual simulation

 

Climate-change and the railway system

  • Impact of extreme weather conditions
  • How to recover the network schedule after incidents
  • Regional approaches needed
  • Northern Europe: flooding
  • Alps: land slides due to heavy rain fall
  • South: maybe high temperatures affecting the maintenance

 

Further topics

  • Energy Efficiency

 

Approach
As the sector is huge and the potential topics of cooperation are so numerous, a new approach, preliminary called “Open call- model” is suggested. It should prevent a time-consuming specification process and instead use creativity of the researcher community to develop R&D within given national thematic frameworks.

 

  

 

Contact information

Support Team

Oliver Althoff, TÜV Rheinland Consulting GmbH

Oliver.Althoff[at]de.tuv.com