Toward new generation railway Traffic Management Systems: the contribution of the OPTIMA project

Legacy Traffic Management Systems (TMS) lack interoperable data structures and standardized communication interfaces. The H2020 Shift2Rail OPTIMA project is developing a demonstrator of a communication platform for a new generation of TMS with advanced functionalities for improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and resilience of railway operations, as well as improved interoperability, modularity, and scalability. In this paper, this platform is described, along with its main components that provide seamless access to persistent and real-time data from heterogeneous data sources. A Common Data Model supports the automated data exchange process by means of a fully standardized structure for representing the data. Furthermore, the testing and validation of the OPTIMA platform and of connected TMS services when it is set up as a testing environment are illustrated.