Andreas Schöbel

Documentation of Flood Damage on Railway Infrastructure

Floods pose a considerable risk to the infrastructure and the operation of the Austrian Federal Railway network (OBB) as seen by the latest major flood event at the March River in 2006. This event, which led, amongst other things, to the shutdown of the Austrian Northern Railway Line between Ganserndorf and Břeclav (Czech Republic) for several months and caused direct infrastructural damage totaling several million EURO, revealed once again the significant vulnerability of the extensive rail network to natural hazard processes in Austria. Experiences gained during this and other events inspired the development of standardized and pragmatic documentation of flood damage. This is aimed in particular at aiding those who inspect the damage during or in the early stages of the aftermath and serves as a guideline for simplifying the damage assessment process, helping to estimate the extent of the losses and producing consistent information. In the longer term, consistent documentation of flood losses can support the development of loss estimation models and efficient risk management strategies. According to this proposal, the documentation takes place in four categories: event documentation, damage documentation, object information and information concerning damage reduction. Thereby, important object categories are defined such as the railway cross section, bridges, interlocking blocks, (station) buildings and transformer substations, to which each of the five damage classes are attributed. These classes represent both structural damage as well as operational impacts. Through visualization in a GIS (Geographical Information System) and by linking information on structural damage to hydraulic data, further insight into the damage processes is gained. The documentation is applied for the 2006 floods at the March River.

Estimation of Safety Requirements for Wayside Hot Box Detection Systems

The estimation of safety requirements for wayside train monitoring systems is becoming more and more relevant due to the fact that new technologies are currently developed to recognize various fault states in railway operation during vehicles run. If such systems try to enter the market soon, the question arises in the process of accreditation at the national notified body. To support this process the BP risk methodology was used in this paper to estimate the required safety integrity level for such monitoring devices.

Anwendungen der Betriebssimulation im Eisenbahnwesen

ZusammenfassungDie betriebliche Simulation erlaubt es, in Szenarien Aussagen über die Funktionalität der einzusetzenden Leit- und Sicherungstechnik in einer spezifischen Umgebung unter realen Bedingungen zu treffen, ohne in die reale Anlage eingreifen zu müssen. Bei Vernetzung von Simulations- und Planungswerkzeugen können Konflikte in der Betriebsführung erkannt und Lösungsvorschläge dem Disponenten angeboten werden. Durch den vermehrten Einsatz von Softwaretools steht die Bahnindustrie vor neuen Herausforderungen des Datenmanagements.AbstractDue to the usage of simulation-tools for planning and operation it is possible to design control and safety technology without disturbance for systems in real time operation. Through the networking of simulation and planning tools conflicts can be recognized and solutions for the dispatcher can be provided.

Variable Neighborhood Search for Integrated Timetable Based Design of Railway Infrastructure

Abstract In this paper we deal with the problem of building new or extending an existing railway infrastructure. The goal is to determine a minimum cost infrastructure fulfilling the requirements defined by an integrated timetable and the operation of the railway system. We first model this planning task as a combinatorial network optimization problem, capturing the essential aspects. We then present a metaheuristic solution method based on general variable neighborhood search that makes use of a dynamic programming procedure for realizing individual connections. Computational experiments indicate that the suggested approach is promising and the analysis of obtained results gives useful hints for future work in this area.

Concept for crossborder data exchange on wayside train monitoring systems

During the last years a concept for an overall train inspection system was developed which allows integration of different stand-alone sensor systems for wayside train monitoring (hot box detection, dynamic weighing, derailment detection, etc.). This paper describes the approach how this concept can be extended for cross-border traffic between different infrastructure managers. Three scenarios were devised which enable the classification of national-specific situations. Based on these models the necessary data exchange between different infrastructure managers can be described systematically.

A flood warning system for railways

Many railway lines follow the course of rivers. A series of large flood events in Austria caused the national railway operator ÖBB to close down several tracks in the past years. This paper reports on a study to develop an off-line flood warning tool for a railway operator. Work underway comprises two tasks: identifying flood-prone locations by combining information on flood areas with railway track locations; linking local investigations and simulations with an existing forecasting system. Local investigations comprise identifying a volume adjustment factor for estimating lateral inflow between the upstream forecasting gauge and the flood-prone location of the track and routing of forecasted and estimated discharge to the identified location. The method proposed seems to be applicable for railway tracks along rivers with existing forecasting systems but additional research is required to adapt the method to local conditions.