201903 – Yagyu, Mazzino & Nardi – Innovative Solutions for Digital Railways: ETCS Evolution and Intelligent Asset Management System

The evolution of digital technologies and information and communication technologies represents a great opportunity for railway managers and operators to manage efficiently the railway infrastructure and to improve their services.

Important steps in this direction have already been taken by railway equipment suppliers, and smart solutions are available in the market.

This paper describes the innovative solutions for the digitalization of railway infrastructure and the achievement of high capacity, reliable, and cost-efficient rail transport.

Two solutions are described: The evolution of ETCS, for improving network capacity, and minimizing infrastructure upgrading, and the Intelligent Asset Management System, for exploiting the vast amount of available data by transforming it into knowledge for supporting decision-making. These two solutions provide a broader vision of a future railway by forming part of an integrated transport eco-system in which information is exchanged between different service providers and transportation modes ultimately to deliver reliable integrated mobility.

Keywords: railway digitalization, big data, artificial intelligence, advanced signalling systems, high capacity infrastructure, intelligent asset management, integrated transport.