OVERVIEW

Transport of people and goods is a fundamental need for the global society and economy as it allows citizens to enjoy the freedom to travel and enables transportation of goods within and across international markets. In this context, transport is one of the fundamental pillars for the European society and economy allowing Europe to provide connectivity between its different regions and remain fully and competitively integrated with the rest of the world and the world economy. Transportation is a key infrastructure for European citizens not only to improve their every day’s quality of life, but also to enable economic growth, job creation and overall prosperity. The European railway industry evaluated how other transportation industries have addressed the development of new technologies and which architectural concepts have been applied. This led to a revaluation for the rail industry providing significant and fast progress in safety, security and in the integration of new functions.

One specific area of improvement is the Train Control and Monitoring System (TCMS), known as the train’s on-board brain and backbone. TCMS provides communication between equipment of different on-board subsystems and it takes train control decisions based on the knowledge of the status of all subsystems. The Next Generation TCMS (NG-TCMS) aims at providing newer and safer features to on-board subsystems as a cornerstone for reaching highly available and reliable train operation. Safe4RAIL-3 will improve the functionality on the NG-TCMS in order to pass from prototypes level to TRL 6/7.