Automated Planning of ETCS Tracks

Abstract

Planning of railway tracks at Deutsche Bahn (DB) so far is done manually by planning experts with the help of CAD tools. This incurs substantial cost and planning time which is exacerbated by the complex planning rules laid down in ETCS regulations mandatory for new tracks. In a project performed for DB Netz AG we explore the possibility of automating a large part of the ETCS rail track planning process. We report on our experience in building a prototypic automated ETCS planning tool. It takes a standardized object-oriented track model as input and provides output in the same format with all required ETCS track elements placed at their correct position. The tool can be integrated into manual planning processes and allows manual fine-tuning. Our approach uses algorithmic sequencing of formalized planning rules based on the knowledge and best practices obtained from experienced track planners. The result of the planning tool can be visualized for the purpose of conformance checking with the ETCS planning rulebooks to simplify the certification process. A model-based, domain-specific test coverage criterion has been developed to validate correctness and completeness of the algorithmic rendering of the rules.

The work reported in this paper was supported by DB Netz AG in project FormETCS, part of the Innovationsallianz TU Darmstadt/Deutsche Bahn AG.