Page 466 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Martín Cabo, Sergio. Mesa Santos, Luis Eduardo. Palacio Vijande, Iván.

1. Introduction

Atlas-Rail project is made up of a geographic database composed of information related
to lines, sections and railway stations, of both European and Spanish high-speed railway
services. All this information has positioning values, in other words, they are geographically
located in the space.
Profits and appliances of Atlas-Rail project are multiple. The first one has mainly a visual
component, and it refers to present geographic database elements in satellite platforms, for
example Google Earth.

The variety of data depends on their accessibility and if they can be compared with the same
data of other spatial units or not.

In particular, it has been possible to obtain and depict technical information related to track
geometry and lines, sections and high-speed rail stations data, taking into account that this
information can be updated according to the activities or actions undertaken.
Cartography is another appliance to be highlighted. If the variety of data increases, the
possibilities to present information in a map also increase. For instance, it can be elaborated
cartography both topological and choropleth map type, in different formats (raster and
vector) and in different geographical base map (physical and political units).

To complement this, Atlas-Rail project can be considered a very interesting tool as a basis for
future research in the area of high-speed railways.

2. Atlas-rail project elements

Atlas-Rail Project has two different types of elements, depending on the nature of the
content offered. On the one hand, there are the database components. On the other hand,
the elements which make up the GIS or Geographic Information System.

2.1 Database components

Regarding database components, there are line-type elements and point-type elements, but
both of them are including inside feature-type or vector-type elements.
In the first case, it refers mostly to high-speed railway lines or, falling this, sections which
have a certain length that, due to their technical characteristics, are capable of hosting high-
speed traffic. Furthermore, it refers to sections that differ from adjacent lines in, at least,
one of its characteristics.

As to point-type elements, they are identified with stations that currently offer high-speed
railway services or cities that will be part of the high-speed network in the future because
there is a high-speed line under construction near or across it.
In the case of lines or sections, each reference point has two coordinate values X and Y. It
would be useful to have a Z value too, but if it is not possible, the height above ground level
value is taken.
The reference points whose X, Y and Z coordinates refer to high-speed railway sections are
located on the track axis. In particular, in the case of being a single track, it is placed among
both lanes. If it is a double-track, the reference point will be marked among both tracks. If
the value exceeds the double-track or junctions, high-speed lines are digitized according to
highspeed rails traffic system. Every reference points are geo-referenced.

The lengthwise separation between two consecutive reference points depends on the scale

464 360.revista de alta velocidad