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González, Ricardo.
Siemens proposal for the digital future of High-Speed Railways is focused on:
Safety and Security: Future High-Speed Railway systems will become more complex in terms
of functionality and interfaces. This will require continuing to ensure the safety of the system
as some elements such as signalling require being safety critical. But on top of that, Security
is increasingly important, especially in all technological areas (IT Security). Special measures
will be required to ensure that High-Speed Railway Security is not violated, as a Security failure
may cause a failure in Safety. IT Security implementation will be required for most IT related
systems on a future High-Speed Railway.
A sustainable and green system: Reducing carbon footprint can be achieved through the use of
advanced Automatic Train Operation (ATO) and Driving Advisory Systems, which are capable of
providing optimized driving strategies depending on the demand. This includes from Ecodriving
when the requirements in transport capacity are medium-low to the maximization of the
transport capacity (with greater energy consumption) when the transport capacity requirements
are higher. In addition to this, conflict detection and resolution strategies will optimize the use
of tracks and trains avoiding unproductive waiting times.
Improved Traveller experience: By using Smart Data to provide immediate information to all
High-Speed Railway stakeholders (operators, maintenance personnel,..) and especially to the
passenger in such a way that travelling in a High-Speed Train is an easy and pleasant experience.
Intelligent investment: This will be achieved through the use of current technologies and
tools. As an example the use of Cloud Storage and Cloud Computing, so that investment costs
related to hardware assets can be reduced. This would also offer the possibility of having
distributed computing that offers better availability and the possibility of centralizing, in a single
application, all management of High-Speed Railway. Extensive use of wireless technologies will
also help to reduce installation and maintenance costs. As an additional intelligent investment
initiative, it can be included the ETCS Level 3 application, as described below.
4.4 ETCS Level 3
ETCS Level 3 is the future of signalling systems. It combines most of the advantages of existing
signalling systems with few drawbacks.
The main advantages of this system are:
• Based on existing ETCS Level 2 system
• Interoperability (it is an ETCS Level and will become interoperable)
• Very low requirements for track detection systems (low CAPEX and OPEX)
• Based on radio communications
• The usage of Moving Block/Virtual Block technology notably improves the performance of
Level 2 as it can potentially provide the best possible headway improving transportation
capacity
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