201403 – Traulsen, Bleidiessel, Fuhrmann & Altehage – Generating Consistent Infrastructure Data for Interlocking Applications

Railway infrastructure data is essential for different stages of an interlocking application; not only directly for planning and operation, but also for documentation, training and simulation systems. The same infrastructure data or at least a different view on the same data is also needed for timetable planning and disposition systems. The consistency and validity of such data is crucial. However, current practice still requires configuration of infrastructure in different ways for different (sub)systems, including the need to manually verify the consistency between different recipients. This is complicated by different infrastructure representations and technologies. Inconsistencies are often detected just when the different systems actually get integrated.

The Advanced Model-Based Environment for Railways (AMBER) is a solution to this problem, which is based on a single infrastructure model and its corresponding tools, which was successfully used for the development of PLC based interlocking applications. These tools allow:
• Modelling all necessary data to plan an interlocking application.
• Validating (or verifying) the data. The model is flexible enough to model only the data actually needed, but also specific enough to allow high level consistency checks.
• Generating different artefacts including general documentation, check-lists, and test-tools that check the correct connection of the electronic parts of the interlocking.
• Directly generate code to be executed on a PLC, in combination with a generic description of the implemented logic. There is no need for low level programming and the documentation – needed for certification – can be generated from the same source.

All tools, including a graphical editor, are implemented using the open source eclipse-modelling-framework, an open standard and tooling for modelling. This allows building on powerful existing tools – free of the burden of proprietary modelling environments.

Besides interlocking applications, the same infrastructure representation is used in operation control systems and for interlocking simulations to integrate and utilize all possible synergies between systems and projects.