The railway system is essential for mitigating the climate impact of passenger and goods transportation. Control-Command and Signalling (CCS) systems are vital for ensuring safe, reliable, and efficient rail operations. With plans to upgrade numerous outdated interlockings and train control systems at an unprecedented pace, there is an urgent need for efficient processes in planning, implementation, and particularly verification at each stage. This challenge spans multiple countries and involves various Infrastructure Managers (IMs), necessitating a focus on interoperability for the validation approach, considering diverse data formats, structures, levels of detail and national specifics.
This study examines the current state of validation and verification procedures for engineering datasets of trackside CCS subsystems at DB InfraGo, the primary IM in Germany, which faces significant political and societal pressure. It also analyses innovative methodologies from other fields, such as EULYNX DataPrep and IFC-Rail for Building Information Modeling (BIM), as well as methodologies from different domains, including the Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM), pipelineML for underground facilities, and IFC-Road for BIM. The analysis considers several code-checking methods to identify future-proof tool support, particularly in light of diminishing human resources for programming and inspection within this sector.
By leveraging model-driven approaches for knowledge representation and rule management, the study revisits various generic methods, including formal methods, business process modeling (BPM), and constrained natural language (CNL). These methods are assessed against criteria tailored for specific applications in trackside CCS engineering, such as managing high complexity in rules, adaptability to various data formats and structures, performance with large datasets, and the ability to enhance existing rulesets with minimal programming skills. The findings aim to improve the efficiency and reliability of
railway infrastructure operations in the CCS domain while outlining research directions that emphasize the need for robust validation and verification processes to ensure resilient railway operations.