A facility for testing ERTMS/ETCS conformity and human factors

Abstract

The advancement of the European rail system into an interoperable system is currently taking place and evolves in several phases: the technical interoperability has to be fulfilled by the new European Train Control System (ETCS) and the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), the operational interoperability will be ensured by a set of harmonised European operational rules and the last step will be a harmonised safety philosophy with regards to technology as well as to human behaviour. Due to the safety-relevance of the railway operation, validation, tests and experiments can only partially be done on real tracks and should be done preferably in simulation laboratories. Nevertheless, the integrated European railway operation needs the validation that the operational rules as well as the safety philosophy and the relating operation of the personnel keeps the current level of operational safety, at least. This must be proven through experiments in laboratories. In this contribution, a general purpose test facility for train control systems called RailSiTe® (Rail Simulation and Testing) is presented. This facility is based on a core simulation lab, which can be used for ERTMS/ETCS interoperability testing and which has been developed in accordance to the European specifications. Due to the generic and modular approach this RailSiTe® can also be used for validation of technical interoperability as well as operational rules and analyses of human factors. The RailSiTe® provides the full technical chain from the signaller’s working place to the driver’s desk including the simulation and visualisation of the environment. Equipment to observe physiological data can be added to the railway specific part to collect objective information about the workload and stress of the staff, especially in exceptional and unexpected situations. Psychological tools to acquire the subjective rating of the situation by the staff are present, too.