The overall aim of this specific Automated Rail Cargo Consortium (ARCC) proposal is to carry out an initial phase of rail freight automation research activities in order to boost levels of quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness in rail freight operations of the European railway sector. The three areas of research activities are: Transporting and delivering freight via automated trains, developing automated support processes at the nodes (e.g. terminals, yards and transhipment points) and advanced timetable planning. If automation and digitalisation processes are exploited in an appropriate way, rail freight transport can generate significant positive impacts for rail freight transport. For example, increased efficiency on the main railway lines and nodes, reducing lead time and energy costs. Additionally, improved services and customer quality so that the operational timetable is met reliably. Furthermore, optimised business processes and management of complex situations, such as a 15% reduction in time when rail assets sit idle within nodes. The Consortium is made up of Joint-Undertaking (JU) members of Shift2rail who are the main drivers in developing and transferring automation technologies and processes to the railway freight sector. The project will start with a Grade of Automation, level 2 (GoA2 level) demonstration and end with a GoA3/4 level crossborder demonstration. The start-up activities in this first batch of Shift2Rail projects will be followed up, in subsequent development phases to achieve higher levels of technical readiness, beyond the 36 month project period.

PLASA represents the 1st proposal of the Shift2Rail members referred, according to MAAP, to the following Work Areas within the Cross Cutting Activities: - WA 3.1: Safety - WA 4.1: Smart Planning The PLASA project aims at significantly increasing customer experience and system robustness in the European rail sector. On the one hand, it improves planning activities of various stakeholders in the railway system by means of precise railway simulation and, on the other hand, it provides a methodology to manage the safety of the railway system based on risk assessment. This will be achieved by an holistic approach involving partners of the rail industry, the operators and universities.

The objective of the RADIUS proposal is to develop a drone – based technology to: (1) Monitor the physical status and electronic functionality of both non safety – critical and safety - critical railway signalling assets (2) Execute specific maintenance activities. RADIUS will focus on: (1) The identification of the best drone technology to be used in the railway sector, considering mainly the signalling assets to be monitored, the characteristics of the lines, the maintenance actions to be implemented and the distances to be covered (2) The design a/o the utilization of drone solution and related payloads capabilities to integrate: a. Sensors, data collection and processing capabilities to allow the monitoring of signalling assets b. Wireless technology to be used to provide a secure communication channel between the drone and the peripheral device, and to allow contactless diagnostic and SW maintenance c. Use of EGNSS solutions for navigation and positioning, such as GALILEO and EGNOS (SBAS), enabling improved drone flight control and safe movements in the complex railways operational scenario d. The most secure data transmission solution to guarantee reliable and secure data exchanges, and embedded data analytics to perform assets monitoring, maintenance prediction analysis, and repairing actions avoiding railway track possession (3) The adaptation a/o redesign of the railway signalling assets to become drone – friendly for the maintenance activities, including the design of a docking station (4) The interaction with existing Intelligent Asset Management Systems (5) The interaction with current Traffic Management Systems, to improve the safe movements of drones within the railway (6) The planning of drone mission strategies in compliance with applicable regulations and with the complexity of the railway environment to fly Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (7) The practical demonstration of a proof of concept (TRL 6) system in a railway relevant environment.

Mankind’s carbon footprint is the underlying cause of global warming. Reducing it drastically within the next few years is imperative and favouring public transportation will be a deciding factor in this race. New technologies have the potential to enable the creation of better public transportation systems, thus enticing citizens away from using private means. Today’s travellers indeed consider public transportation as a source of difficulties and a cumbersome way to travel. When riders choose their journeys, they are often left to fend for themselves. They have to figure out transfers between multimodal forms of travel and how to handle disruptions and re-plan their route, when not left stranded. In addition, the current variety and heterogeneity of services along multimodal journeys is another serious source of complication and frustration. Increasing the attractiveness of rail transport requires a novel and integrated solution that will be developed in the IP4 part of the Shift2Rail project. It will guide, support, inform, and even entertain users throughout their entire itinerary, adapting to unforeseeable interruptions and events in order to propose alternative routes, including in the first and last miles. A real door-to-door travel solution including all modes of transport will be developed along with new forms of traveller experiences aiming to transform the travel itself into an “ATTRACkTIVE” part of the journey. This proposal aims to implement both the Shift2Rail Trip Tracker (TD4.4) and Travel Companion (TD4.5), two major components to materialise this vision and deliver seamless door-to-door travel support encompassing both public and private transportation portions of a journey. This includes disruption handling, navigation and user centric ubiquitous applications as well as the required tooling and modular design to foster adoption and enable future refinements, new concepts and ideas.

RHINOS aims at increasing the use of EGNSS to support the safety-critical train localization function for train control in emerging regional and global markets. RHINOS adds value to EGNSS by leveraging the results from prior or existing projects, and develops a Railway High Integrity Navigation Overlay System to be used by the rail community. RHINOS pillar is the GNSS infrastructure realized for the aviation application with additional layers that meet the rail requirements in the difficult railway environments. RHINOS will feature an international cooperation with the Stanford University that has been involved in the aviation application since the birth of the GPS, gaining an undeniable knowledge of the GNSS performance and high-integrity applications. The ambition is a positive step beyond the proliferation of GNSS platforms, mainly tailored for regional applications, to favor a global solution to release the potential benefits of the EGNSS in the fast growing train signaling world market. The RHINOS work programme includes the investigation of candidate concepts for the provision of the high integrity needed to protect the detected position of the train, as required by the train control system application. The EGNSS (GALILEO and EGNOS) plus GPS and WAAS constitute the reference infrastructure that is available world-wide. Moreover, local augmentation elements, ARAIM techniques and other sensors on the train are the add-on specific assets for mitigating the hazards due to the environmental effects which dominate the rail application. A further objective of RHINOS is to contribute to the definition of a standard for the Railway High Integrity Navigation Overlay System leveraging on the EU-US Cooperation Agreement on ARAIM. The RHINOS dissemination plan includes three specific Workshops with the rail and satellite stakeholders, at Stanford University for the US community, in Roma for the Western European community and in Prague for the Eastern European community.