The establishment of good governance will effectively secure the confidence of the industry to use the Interoperability Framework (IF) semantic technologies that will be established under the IP4 Shift2Rail program. The objective of the Governance of the IF for Rail and Intermodal Mobility (GoF4R) project is to define sustainable governance for the IF that will create the right conditions to introduce seamless mobility services and foster the development of multi-modal travel services. GoF4R will help to overcome obstacles currently impeding development of market innovation by fostering a large acceptance of the “semantic web for transportation.” The objectives will be achieved through a partnership of specialist participants including research institutions, a major European rail operator, industry associations representing the passenger and multi-modal transport sectors and public transportation authorities. Participants, who are also involved in the consortium of designers for the IF, will focus on the establishment of sustainable governance that will promote community confidence. The governance structure will create the basis for long term stability and controlled future evolution of the IF, promoting industry confidence so that it is attractive to invest in future products and services. The project encompasses all current and future stakeholders who will exploit the IF as described in the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan, contributing to the realisation of a distributed semantic “web of transport” integrating the TAP-TSI specifications as one of its elements. The governance models proposed in GoF4R will assure the interests of European travellers by fostering market uptake by mobility service providers. It will facilitate new business opportunities for improved mobility and travel related services and improve the incorporation of new stakeholders in the European arena by removing technological, administrative and economic boundaries.

The STARS project paves the way for the future EGNSS deployment in safety relevant railway applications. By evolving the highly developed and deployed ERTMS standard through the implementation of the satellite positioning functionality, it will be possible to reduce the cost of the future railway signalling systems, especially for lines with lower traffic density. The project deals with three main topics: 1) The elaboration of reference data and characterisation of the railway environment through a measurement campaign; 2) The assessment of the EGNSS performances achievable in the railway environment with the determination of the applicable requirements for the positioning system as well as the necessary evolutions of EGNSS services and ERTMS/ETCS functions and 3) Quantification of the economic benefits and specifying the possible implementation roadmap when applying the EGNSS on railways. The project is strongly linked with other initiatives and actions on the same topic in Europe. In order to feed directly into the standardization work of ERTMS, the project partners will cooperate closely with UNISIG. Moreover, the project will actively interact with NGTC (EU funded FP7) and the results will be directly implemented by SHIFT2RAIL, providing the practical demonstrators for different categories of railway tracks. The approach developed in STARS is also taking the profit of the strong know-how inherited from civil aviation, making this project as completely integrated and consistent in overall activities in Europe and worldwide, leading to the effective deployment of the satellite technologies in advanced railway signalling systems.

The ETALON project focus is the adaptation of energy harvesting methodologies for trackside and on-board signaling and communication devices. The project scope is divided into two work-streams. The first is the development of competitive solutions for enhancing train integrity functionalities, including provision of suitable energy supply for on board train integrity devices. This is particularly targeted at cases where trains (especially freight trains) do not have any power supply available on the wagons, emphasis is also placed on considering the proposition of a robust communication system that will overcome on-board communication issues within the rail environment. The second work-stream focuses on the development of competitive energy harvesting solutions for enhancing trackside object controller deployment, with the vision to minimizing trackside infrastructure, especially cabling. Specifically relevant to the S2R, the ETALON project Technical Objectives are to: 1: Identify, adapt and validate effective solutions for on-board Train Integrity radio communication systems (including antennas suitable to be installed in the queue of a very long train); 2: Identify, adapt and validate effective energy generation solutions for feeding on-board Train Integrity systems; 3: Identify the most suitable energy harvesting solution for new trackside Object Controllers, considering both a technical and economic point of view; 4: Demonstrate the efficiency of proposed energy harvesting solutions for trackside Object Controllers, ensuring appropriate safety considerations; As a result of these activities, ETALON will specify and develop energy harvesting solutions to support on-board train integrity and trackside object controllers which are economically viable and suitable for application, particularly considering modern radio communication requirements and safety critical aspects. The prototypes will be tested and validated in controlled as well as real environments.

The IT²RAIL -“Information Technologies for Shift to rail” proposal, first step towards the long term IP4 -“IT for an Attractive Railway” SHIFT²RAIL Innovation Programme, aims at providing a new seamless travel experience, giving access to a complete multimodal travel offer which connects the first and last mile to long distance journeys. This is achieved through the introduction of a ground breaking Technical Enabler based on two concepts: • the traveler is placed at the heart of innovative solutions, accessing all multimodal travel services (shopping, ticketing, and tracking) through its travel-companion. • An open published framework is providing full interoperability whilst limiting impacts on existing systems, without prerequisites for centralized standardization. This Technical Enabler will be completely settled in the context of the SHIFT²RAIL IP4, and IT²RAIL is proposing a reduced approach to the scale of a specified use case without weakening any of the key concepts of IP4, such as the usage of Semantic Web technologies, meta planning on distributed data, travel companion with a protected and secured personal wallet stored in the cloud and including the rights to travel. The use case will be defined as a specific instantiation of our open concepts, and will benefit from a completely scalable architecture fully instantiated in IP4. This approach is addressing all the key challenges of the work program, supporting a complete door-to- door intermodal travel offer and proposing a seamless integration of the very diverse existing and future services for planning, one-stop-shop ticketing, and real-time re-accommodation. Moreover, thanks to an Interoperability framework which insulates travel applications from the standards fragmentation in multimodal transport, IT²RAIL liberates business-model innovations in the market-place, guaranteeing the economic self-sustainability of these e-services in the long-term.

The objective of the proposal is research in semantic, ontology based automation of transformations between heterogeneous data formats, and its application to a complex ‘after-sales’ process use case in an actual run-time demonstration scenario. The technology will leverage Shift2Rail Interoperability Framework (IF) components developed in the IT2Rail “lighthouse” project, extending it for use in related Shift2Rail projects under the “S2R-CFM-IP4-01-2015: Shopping, booking and ticketing of multimodal travel solutions” and “S2R-CFM-IP4-02-2015: Travel companion and tracking services” calls. The project will additionally provide a case scenario for exercising the Governance and management structure developed under the related “S2R-OC-IP4-01-2016: IF Governance, ensuring its market uptake and sustainability” call. The objectives will be achieved through a partnership of specialist participants including research institutions, a major European rail operator, industry associations representing the rail sector and public transportation authorities, and industrial providers of mission critical ICT solutions to the rail sector. Participants, which are also involved in the original consortium of designers for the IF in IT2Rail, will perform work organised in specific work packages focused on fundamental industrial research in semantic web technologies. These technologies will comprise ontology engineering and automated semantic transformations, in a dedicated work package, to provide the actual runtime demonstration scenario of the application of such technology to transformations of existing European TAP-TSI specification exchanges executed on an existing industrial platform for such exchanges. The project extends the capabilities of the IF as described in the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan contributing to the realisation of a distributed semantic “web of transport” integrating the TAP-TSI specification as one of its elements.