Early Warning Systems for Transport Lines
The purpose of the proposed joint research project is to develop and test an early earthquake warning system that reduces the risk of damage for transport lines. In the case of a major earthquake, all land-based transportation systems share similar problems for which the present project proposes common solutions.
For many transportation systems there exist traffic control centers, which can interfere and influence the flow of traffic more of less directly. In the case of an earthquake, traffic control centers will decide whether and where in a particular region, traffic is prevented to enter endangered regions. Furthermore, an immediate speed reduction of the vehicles in that region may be initiated. The development and testing of an early warning system for transportation lines will be carried out first for railbound transportation systems. On one hand, this transportation mode is particularly vulnerable and risk minimization measures are more difficult to implement, e.g. because of the long braking distance of trains. On the other hand, in railbound traffic, every train movement is planned in advance and controlled from the outside, and thus characterized by very high standards of organization, control, and safety. Therefore, this mode of transportation is predestinated for applying specific and coordinated emergency measures from outside, and hence well suited for testing the efficiency of the proposed early warning system. The experience gained here will be useful in the development of information systems for other transport lines.
The following three development areas will be addressed in the project:
Project partners:
Project funding:
The purpose of the proposed joint research project is to develop and test an early earthquake warning system that reduces the risk of damage for transport lines. In the case of a major earthquake, all land-based transportation systems share similar problems for which the present project proposes common solutions.
For many transportation systems there exist traffic control centers, which can interfere and influence the flow of traffic more of less directly. In the case of an earthquake, traffic control centers will decide whether and where in a particular region, traffic is prevented to enter endangered regions. Furthermore, an immediate speed reduction of the vehicles in that region may be initiated. The development and testing of an early warning system for transportation lines will be carried out first for railbound transportation systems. On one hand, this transportation mode is particularly vulnerable and risk minimization measures are more difficult to implement, e.g. because of the long braking distance of trains. On the other hand, in railbound traffic, every train movement is planned in advance and controlled from the outside, and thus characterized by very high standards of organization, control, and safety. Therefore, this mode of transportation is predestinated for applying specific and coordinated emergency measures from outside, and hence well suited for testing the efficiency of the proposed early warning system. The experience gained here will be useful in the development of information systems for other transport lines.
The following three development areas will be addressed in the project:
- New early detection methods are used to determine important parameters such as magnitude, location, time, and spatial distribution of an earthquake. The seismic hazard for a particular region is then projected onto transport lines within the range of a given control center.
- For the goal of risk minimization EWS Transport will produce an early estimate of the damage in the network that has been caused by the earthquake. Finally, the proposed standardized early warning system will allow a continuous monitoring of the network state also when there is no imminent danger.
- A service-oriented architecture of a information and communication system shall support the information exchange and the decision process, such that an efficient event management will be possible.
Project partners:
- Department of Railway Systems of University of Karlsruhe
- Geophysical Institute of University of Karlsruhe
- Fraunhofer IOSB
Project funding: