Ontology Based Approach for an European Wayside Train Monitoring System

Due to the automation and centralisation of railway operation the demand for train monitoring systems arises to guarantee operational safety in times of liberalisation of the railway market. The motivation for wayside train monitoring has it’s origin in national considerations and regulations. Accordingly monitoring systems are designed for national use, but the market of railway undertakings is not limited to national borders anymore. By exchanging measured data of wayside train monitoring devices across national borders, an improvement of availability and safety in rail traffic on the European corridors seems to be achievable. Beyond different thresholds for measurements used by different infrastructure managers an ontology based method of describing fault states and their dependencies remains the same. The realisation of monitoring measures may be national specific, but the opportunity for cross border data exchange seems to be possible. Therefore a concept was developed which shall allow application of the national driven approach on the European freight corridors.