2014 – March – Altehage – Generating Consistent Infrastructure Data for Interlocking Applications

Klaus Altehage MSc, MIRSE SelectRail (Australia) Pty Ltd 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.