Scale, Scope and Control: Safety Integrity Challenges in Railway Control Systems

摘要

Many of the railway control systems currently in use on the UK rail infrastructure are a patchwork of modern technologies interlaced with remnants of the original Victorian era and therefore many of the current upgrade programmes seek to provide a single control technology for both the infrastructure and the trains. These upgrade programmes have therefore also demanded changes in the technologies that provide train protection systems and train regulation. Perhaps one of the widest ranging changes currently being planned for imminent future implementation is Network Rail's Traffic Management Solution. This system will be highly dependent on commercial computational platforms and data. While these systems are not new, they are all in existence on other railways around the world, the salient safety issues are the scale, scope and nature of the proposed span of control and the means by which a safety argument may need to be constructed to demonstrate safety. This paper will illustrate the integrity required from the 'controlling element', akin to a signalling control centre, and hence identify the significant challenges for the Traffic Management Solution, its equipment and system acceptance.