openETCS

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openETCS aims to make the successful concept of open source programs usable for safety-critical areas of rail and traffic engineering. It was regarded as a method for the development of ETCS vehicle equipment of the new generation ETCS Baseline 3 . Since 2011 it has been run as a project of the Western European software research framework program Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA). As a result, it became an essential carrier of interoperability according to TSI , in which the software of the ETCS core functionality was made available under EUPL (version 1.1). A programming interface (API) was defined that makes openETCS software universally executable on suitable computer systems ( European Vital Computer ). In addition, a complete tool environment was created for specification, modeling, development, verification and validation (testing) of the software. This makes the software supplied in the ETCS vehicle computers available for a broad quality control and makes the safety certificates obtained accessible to a public specialist discussion. In addition to the software, all tools and documentation methods required for quality assurance are thus recorded.

After the project was carried out at the same time as the NeuPro project of Deutsche Bahn (DB), there was no direct link between vehicle and track technology and logistics. After the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) launched the openETCS e. V. have joined, a significant expansion of activities to include trackside equipment.

Reason

The justification for the need for such an approach arises from the fact that the ETCS on-board equipment will be an essential carrier of the safety functions for interoperability for the future European railway system. On the one hand, with the publication of the SRS from baseline 3 onwards, the functional specification has already been published and, on the other hand, guaranteeing railway safety is a public task of high importance. In principle, software can be understood as a transformation of the functional specification for the purpose of processing by a machine (here a microprocessor). So there is basically no advantage in keeping the software secret if the specification is already available as a public document, since the functional specification contains the specific system knowledge, the ETCS core software is also not suitable as a product-differentiating feature for different manufacturers. Parallel developments of the same software functionality then only represent a waste of scarce development resources with suboptimal results at the same time, since experience has shown that in a consortium-based open source software project, the number of remaining errors will be reduced more quickly in the course of its life cycle than different parallel development projects with limited development teams can do.

In 2009, Deutsche Bahn launched a project in which the possibility of reducing ETCS vehicle costs could at least be reduced to the level of conventional train control systems. Based on more than ten years of experience of Deutsche Bahn with software published under a free license and / or as open source software, the idea of ​​a corresponding ETCS solution was born. The proposal for an openETCS project was presented to the public for the first time in 2009 at a conference of the ifv rail technology in Berlin. It was then presented to a larger specialist audience at the Signal + Draht symposium in October 2009 in Fulda and published in the Signal + Draht magazine 10/2009. The response in the rail industry varied widely. While the concept was welcomed by some rail operators, as an improvement in quality is expected in the long term and the dependency ( vendor lock-in ) on the original manufacturers for software maintenance is reduced. On the other hand, parts of the manufacturing industry doubted that safety-critical software in the railway sector can be used on the basis of open source projects.

history

In a Memorandum of Understanding, five European railway companies (ATOC (UK), DB Fernverkehr (D), NS (NL), SNCF (F), Trenitalia (I)) agreed to define and advance an openETCS project.

In its tender for the procurement of ETCS vehicle equipment for the ICE T (series 411, 415) and ICE 3, DB Fernverkehr AG requested a license according to EUPL v.1.1 for the ETCS core software according to UNISIG subset 026 for the first time. Two bidders offered an open source option. The contract was awarded to Alstom .

The equipment has been used for the first time since the timetable change in December 2012 for traveling on the ETCS route St. Pölten - Vienna ( Westbahn ) and will later be used on ETCS routes in Switzerland and in the entire network of DB Netz AG. Licensing according to EUPL and thus disclosure of the software was planned in 2011 at the earliest with the availability of ETCS Baseline 3 from 2013, but should have taken place in 2017 [out of date] at the latest . In 2013 it was assumed that it would be published in 2016 [obsolete] .

The development of openETCS has been financed with public funds as an ITEA project since the end of 2011. 32 companies and organizations took part in this project.

Since the end of the project in December 2015, there have been no more published activities. The results are presented on the current ITEA 3 website.

In February 2019, the accession of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) to openETCS e. V. announced. This brings about a significant expansion of the trackside equipment. With its national Smartrail 4.0 initiative and Reference CCS Architecture (RCA), SBB has already gained experience in the field of Common Components Systems (CCS). The aim is to work with the openETCS members to achieve a suitable CCS reference architecture on the vehicle side as well.

literature

  • Klaus-Rüdiger Hase: "openETCS" - a proposal to reduce costs and accelerate the ETCS migration. In: signal + wire . Issue 10/2009, pp. 18-25.
  • Marc Behrens and others ( DLR ): Testing in the model-based development of the ETCS on-board unit . Signaling and Datacommunication 108, Issue 7 + 8/2016, pp. 21–28.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Klaus-Rüdiger Hase: An open approach to interoperability . In: Railway Gazette International . tape 168 , no. 3 , 2012, ISSN  0373-5346 , p. 51-53 .
  2. ↑ a b SBB joins openETCS Foundation. In: www.railwaygazette.com. February 25, 2019, accessed March 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ CONTENT OF THE CONFERENCE: TSI & ETCS Railway Technical Approval 2009 ( Memento of the original from November 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 63 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ifv-bahntechnik.de
  4. ↑ Jan-Peter Böhm, Werner Geier, Peter Lankes, Jürgen Memke: Equipping the German ICE high-speed trains with ETCS . In: Railway technical review . tape 63 , no. 5 , 2014, ISSN  0013-2845 , p. 49-57 .
  5. ↑ Klaus-Rüdiger Hase, Jean Y. Koulischer: openETCS: Open Source Principles for the European Train Control System (PDF; 3.1 MB)
  6. ↑ Klaus-Rüdiger Hase: Open Source Software for ETCS . In: Your train . tape 41 , no. 1 , 2013, ISSN  0948-7263 , p. 16-21 .
  7. ↑ itea3.org
  8. ↑ openETCS - Open Proofs Methodology for the European Train Control Onboard System. EUREKA , accessed on September 21, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Common Components System. In: http://ccs.rne.eu/ . RailNetEurope , accessed on March 1, 2019 (English).