International Association of Railway Operations Research

Welcome at the homepage of the International Association of Railway Operations Research (IAROR).

12th World Conference of Transportation Research Lisbon 11-15 July 2010

The WCTR Steering Committee has recently approved the formation of the Rail Transport Special Interest Group (SIG). It will promote the submission and review of abstracts, papers and support the Steering Committee in the preparation of Rail Transport related Conference Sessions. The Rail Transport SIG focuses on academic research on rail operations, planning and economics. It covers passenger and freight and long distance, regional and urban (including metro and light rail) services. Its objectives are:

• Promote the exchange of ideas, methodologies, and results of rail transport and research through conferences, symposia, and regional meetings;
• Organize and coordinate rail transport sessions at the WCTRS conferences;
• Promote interaction between academics, government and industry researchers, industry executives and policymakers on important policy, strategy, operations and technology issues affecting rail transport;
• Develop rail transport research capabilities for projects of an international scale requiring multidisciplinary cooperation; Promote linkages between the research community and international agencies and institutions dealing with rail policy and capacity management; and,
• Facilitate the formation of international research teams for conducting world-scale research programs on critical rail transport issues.

Membership is open to any academic researchers with research interest in the subject area. The SIG will have its own website, hosted by the University of Southampton. The SIG is jointly led by Professor John Preston (University of Southampton), who will lead the policy and economics aspects and Professor Ingo Hansen (Delft University of Technology), who will lead the planning and operations aspects.

Call for abstracts.

3rd International Seminar on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis RailZurich2009

On 11 – 13 February 2009, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich hosted 125 participants from 20 countries at the 3rd International Seminar on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis (ISROR). Railway researchers from Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Portugal, United States, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan were present. They come from universities, railway operators and infrastructure companies, research institutes, consulting companies, and public administrations.

The program comprised key-note speeches by Mr. Bernard Guillelmon (CEO of BLS) on ‘Challenges and Solutions of BLS Traffic Management’ and Dr. Peter Eichenberger from SBB on ‘ETCS in the Crossfire of Safety, Capacity, Economics and Politics’.

Key-note presentation by Dr. Peter Eichenberger, ETCS specialist at SBB

In total 35 talks in parallel sessions on topics, like timetabling, capacity, rescheduling, robustness and optimisation were held. The 7th Framework of EU-sponsored research project ARRIVAL were devoted Special Sessions.

The technical visits included a trip by the new low-floor tramcar of Verkehrsbetriebe Zurich and demonstrations of innovative rail traffic management and automation systems from systransis and SBB in Zug and Lucerne.

The members of the organising committee and of the IAROR Board selected the contributions by Gabrio Caimi (ETH Zurich) as winner of the Young Researcher Award (worth EUR 2'500). The IAROR Board also nominated 7 papers for a special issue in the journal Transportation Planning and Technology. These papers will still be reviewed and revised more in detail.

Gabrio Caimi, winner of the Young Railway Operations Research Award

The Board of IAROR as well as the chair were re-elected and consists of I.A. Hansen/the Netherlands (President), E. Wendler/Germany (Vice-President), A. Radtke/Germany, R. Watson/United Kingdom, J. Rodriguez/France, A. Wardrop/Australia, T. White/United States, A.H. Kaas/Denmark, S. Ricci/Italy and M. Lüthi/Switzerland. N. Tomii/Japan and D. Hürlimann/Switzerland were elected as new IAROR Board members.

The 4th ISROR will be held on February 2011 at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.

Textbook on Railway Operations Research

In January 2008, Eurailpress published the new textbook "Railway Timetable & Traffic". An international team of authors describes current state-of-the-art methods of railway timetabling, operations analysis and modelling, simulation, and traffic management.

Aims and scope of IAROR

The International Association of Railway Operations Research was founded on 8 June 2005 during the 1st International Seminar on Railway Operations Modeling and Analysis at Delft University of Technology and decided on the following mission statement:

IAROR combines the expertise of academic and professional railway research with the aim of:

• enhancing the quality of service for railway passengers and customers
• improving the effectiveness and efficiency of capacity management, timetabling, traffic management and
• ensuring the safety of railway operations.

The revolutionary process of wide spread integration of artificial intelligence, computer science and telecommunications in the design of timetables, train detection and integrity, dispatching, signalling, interlocking, train control, traffic regulation, and ultimately automatic train operation creates great opportunities for increasing the capacity of railway infrastructure, optimising the use of rolling stock and making passenger and freight transport by rail more competitive.

IAROR stimulates innovative theoretical approaches, high-tech concepts, new technological developments and dynamic decision support systems that contribute to a higher flexibility, performance and punctuality of trains operating in heterogeneeous networks (lines and junctions). IAROR contributes to the development of new international standards for railway capacity and traffic management by integration of the state-of-the-art from different scientific disciplines as engineering, mathematics, physics, economics and computer science.

IAROR aims at becoming the Network of Excellence in the field of railway operations research and an acknowledged advisor to governments, railway infrastructure managers, train operating companies and the industrial suppliers with regard to the development and evaluation of research programs, innovation strategies, directives and norms for railway operations

International transfer of knowledge and co-operation will be strengthened by organising the International Seminar on Railway Operations Research (ISROR).