> Overview > Work Structure > Deliverables
This section gives a general overview on the planned work which aims at a
gradual introduction of the IT service platform with a stepwise connection of
the stakeholders.
As a first step the need for services and data exchange between
IM – IM
TOC – TOC and
IM – TOC
will be analysed and helpful services (applications) shall be realised. The
communication with customers and authorities remains unchanged. In principle
it is well known, which applications are necessary for an efficient border-crossing
traffic and transport management in the rail mode. UIC leaflet 407 contains
most of the necessary applications for IMs at interchanges and 404-2 in a similar
way those for the TOCs.
The new aspect to be realised here as opposed to the state-of-the-art is the central and parallel availability of relevant data to all TOCs and IMs as soon as one of them has put in his information. This results in much longer lead times. Here only those data will be exchanged which would be exchanged in any case, but no longer in a serial way from
one TOC (respective IM) to the neighbouring one. The communication needs between
IMs and TOCs e.g. on train delays, train composition, rerouting, rescheduling,
and other specific works are conceptualised in UIC 407-1 (draft), which will
serve as a basis for the realisation of the data exchange between TOC and IM
via the intermediate platform(s).
With this platform only for IMs and TOCs confidentiality problems will not yet
arise and have not to be taken into account in this phase of work. But the communication
between the stakeholders of the railways is no longer bilateral and serial but
star-like and parallel with a central service platform. It has to be ensured,
that the stakeholders are connected to the platform via converters. The reason
is, that these converters will enable the railways to further use their in-house
systems, which have been expensive and offer their specific advantages. The
converters shall be built for the demonstration of the concept by partners in
the project, because this is not the preferred business of railways. For a demonstration
at a border-crossing, converters for two TOCs and two IMs will be needed. They
can also be used in the next phase, when the final service platform is built
up with the additional integration of customers and authorities.
The second step towards the final service-system deals to a great extent with
confidential commercial data being interchanged between TOCs, customers and
authorities. Therefore in this step a concept has to be introduced for secure
data transmission between players, for the granting of specific access rights,
i.e. in addition to mere data conversion between different standards also data
filtering and confidentiality aspects must be worked on. This situation is indicated
in Fig. 1:
