PhD Student

• Critical infrastructures
• Construction of railway infrastructure
• Railway operating
• Development of algorithms

Approach for determining operationally optimized track possession for ETCS installation (Working Title)

As part of the mobility transition, more traffic is to be shifted to railway and cross-border traffic in Europe is to be simplified. This will be made possible by a nationwide rollout of the uniform European Train Control System (ETCS). For this rollout, ETCS infrastructural components have to be installed along the track, which necessitates track possessions. The track possessions are accompanied by a severe impairment of railway operations, with far-reaching consequences, especially in urban transport hubs. To minimize disruptions, all track possessions in the railway network must be coordinated and bundled in advance. It is therefore necessary to register the track possession up to ten years in advance of the actual possession. At this early stage, detailed planning is non-existing and cannot be used to determine the track possession. Furthermore, there are currently no empirical values to determine the track possession for ETCS installation. Hence, an approach for determining the operationally optimized track possession for ETCS installation will be developed in this research work. By doing so, more capacity in the railway network can be gained, the roll out of ETCS is accelerated and duplication of work in planning is reduced.