Opening session at Norrköping Campus lecture hall
The 8th bi-annual International Conference on Railway Operations Modelling and Analysis (ICROMA) was held at Linköping University, campus Norrköping, in Sweden on June 17th – 20th, 2019. The Conference was organized by Norio Tomii (Chiba Institute of Technology), Ingo A. Hansen (Delft University of Technology), Anders Peterson (Linköping University), Markus Bohlin (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Martin Joborn (Linköping University and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden), Emma Solinen (Trafikverket), and Johan Högdahl (KTH Royal Institute of Technology). The Scientific Advisory Committee consisted of the Board members of the International Association of Railway Operations Research and was extended by the other 20 most active reviewers/senior researchers representing the leading academic institutes experienced in railway transport line planning, traffic management, and operations research from more than 10 countries.
The 8th ICROMA was held on 4 days and comprised
- 3 keynote speeches on
- “Railway Market Opening and Organisational Reforms in Sweden” by prof. Gunnar Alexandersson (Stockholm School of Economics)
- “Railway operations research and the development of digital railway traffic systems” by prof. Rob Goverde
- “What is the social value of railway capacity?” by prof. Jonas Eliasson (Linköping University).
- 38 track sessions with in total 122 talks
- A Technical Visit by a chartered train to the largest marshalling yard in Scandinavia, Hallsberg, containing also a visit to the headquarter of the Swedish state-owned freight rail undertaking (Green Cargo), a vehicle workshop and a de-icing facility.
- A Short Course given by 4 invited speakers on
- “Introduction to big data in traffic planning” by Clas Rydergren (Linköping University),
- “Mining, analysis and modelling of passenger flow data, time and route choice in railway networks” by Otto Anker Nielsen (Technical University of Denmark),
- “Analysis of train traffic and track capacity use to improve the quality of operations” by Giorgio Medeossi (TRENOlab, Italy),
- “Machine Learning: theory and application” by Pavle Kecman (Allianz Data Office, The Netherlands).
The 8th ICROMA RailNorrköping2019 attracted a total of 253 participants from 20 countries. A total of 182 Abstracts had been submitted originally, 123 papers (98 full length research papers and 25 professional papers from authors working in the railway industry respectively) had been accepted, and 122 papers were finally presented.
During the Conference 22 participants applied for membership of the International Association of Railway Operations Research. This means the current IAROR membership has reached the number of 434.
The members of IAROR present on the Conference elected the following new Board members:
- Prof. Ivan Belosevic (University of Belgrade, Serbia),
- Prof. Francesco Corman (ETH Zurich, Switzerland),
- Prof. Christian Liebchen (Technical University Wildau, Germany),
- Dr. Paola Pellegrini (IFSTTAR, France),
- Prof. Pieter Vansteenwegen (University of Leuven, Belgium),
- Prof. Lai Yung-Cheng (National Taiwan University, Taiwan).
The IAROR Board membership of dr. Alfons Radtke expired. There were no new candidates for President and Vice President of IAROR. N. Tomii and I.A. Hansen will continue to be President and Vice-President until the next ICROMA 2021. The IAROR members voted to hold the 9th ICROMA 2021 in the city of Beijing/P.R. of China.
The members of the Organization Committee and of the extended Scientific Advisory Committee together with the members of the Board of IAROR present on the Conference selected as winners of the Young Researcher Operations Research Award:
- Ambra Toletti (ETH Zurich/Swiss Federal Railways) for her excellent and innovative paper “Coordinated railway traffic rescheduling with the Resource Conflict Graph model” – Prize of € 5000
- Egidio Quaglietta (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) for his paper “A multi-state train-following model for the analysis of Virtual Coupling railway operations”.
- Yongqiu Zhu (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) for her paper “Dynamic and Robust Timetable Rescheduling for Uncertain Railway Disruptions”
The Members of the Board and of the extended Scientific Advisory Committee voted also for the newly introduced Best Professional Paper Award and selected:
- Thomas Graffagnino, Roland Schäfer, Matthias Tuchschmid and Marco Weibel (Swiss Federal Railways) for their excellent paper “Energy Savings with Enhanced Static Timetable Information for Train Drivers” – Prize of € 1000
- Yasufumi Ochiai (Odakyu Electric Railway), Norio Tomii (Nihon University)
- Florian Dahms (Vulpes AI GmbH), Anna-Lena Frank, Sebastian Kühn and Daniel Pöhle (DB Netz).
Conference website: www.railnorrkoping2019.org