Abstract

The rail mode has a competitive disadvantage against other modes through inadequate availability and missing of data, through operating with unaccompanied transport units, which are not part of an international data system, which are tracked by mostly manual processes.
Therefore CroBIT will address the following problems

· How to improve the co-operation across borders between the different players in a transport chain?
· How to obtain accurate real-time information on the location and status of the payload?
· How to provide continuous data on the train and select necessary activities?
· Which value-added services not available today should be offered?
· Which IT structure is favourable to achieve higher levels of performance and cost-efficiency?

Basically a consignment being transported along a chain must be

· preceded by data (to identify it and to ensure its treatment by different players needing their respective lead times)
· accompanied by data (to identity and monitor it on route)
· followed by data (to summarise events, to report on history, to prepare invoicing, to discharge the carrier)

Other data can be used to perform other railway activities such as the provision of empty wagons, to prepare locomotives, to activate crews and operations in marshalling yards, to measure use dependent maintenance intervals of rolling stock and infrastructure, to optimise performance.
Together with the increasing demand for on-line accurate information and communication with the customer (booking, status reports, ETA, tracking) the use of modern IT-technologies is inevitable. The consortium consists of partners who are interested and able to realise a starting point for a European Service Provider like RAILINC. Demonstrations will be made for the enhancement of cross border procedures. For this purpose best practice are applicated in different corridors.