Data configurations in railway signalling engineering - an application of enterprise systems techniques

Railway signalling system is a safety-critical system to ensure railway safety and its development cost is huge. It is of great economic value to apply the generic signalling systems in different environments through configuration of different application data. In this paper, a new method to configure the application data completely and accurately is illustrated; in particular, a technique called automatic generation technology is introduced to automatically configure the functional logic of safety-critical systems, i.e. computer-based interlocking (CBI) system and automatic train protection (ATP) system. All of the application data are collected from the workflow among various departments through the enterprise system (ES). Some application data are represented by models employing automatic generation technology, and the functional logic is then obtained through analysis using these models. A configuration platform based on the ES is developed in which both the efficiency and accuracy of the application data configuration are significantly improved. In addition, it is capable of reducing human errors to a maximal extent.