Abstract

In a context of wide use of transport, it is necessary to increase efficiency of the different transport modes as well as their interaction. To that effect, rail transport will play an important role in the future by increasing its capacity. Thus, it would be necessary to strength the competitiveness of railway ensuring a sustainable, efficient and safe service. In that sense, it is essential to improve the interoperability and safety of national networks in order to promote a single European Rail Market. Nevertheless, there are still several barriers to overcome as a consequence of the lack of a common definition of standards at European level. Within this framework, the main objective targeted by the OPTIRAIL project aims at developing a new tool, based on Fuzzy and Computational Intelligence techniques and validated through two case studies, that will enable the better cross-border coordination for decision making of railway infrastructure maintenance across the European railway corridors. In order to be able to achieve the exposed objective, the project Consortium is comprised of a well-balanced group of 9 partners from 6 European countries with complementary skills and expertise, including all the necessary profiles to deal with the scheduled project work plan. Furthermore, non-participant railway administrators have shown their interest and commitment to the project. This interdisciplinary group of the railway managers, railway suppliers, software & embedded systems developers, and technological R&D centres are strongly committed to efficiently coordinate their resources over the 36 months duration of the project in order to be able to reach all expected project outcomes. The estimated overall budget of the project is 3.916.343,40 €.