| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/R21363/01 |
| Title: |
Objectives In Automated Railway Timetable Generation |
| Principal Investigator: |
Gillingwater, Dr D |
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| Department: |
Civil and Building Engineering |
| Organisation: |
Loughborough University |
| Scheme: |
Fast Stream |
| Starts: |
26 March 2001 |
Ends: |
25 June 2002 |
Value (£): |
50,154
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Information & Knowledge Mgmt |
Transport Ops & Management |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| Transport Systems and Vehicles |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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There is an urgent need to improve the railway timetable development process both in time taken and quality of output to cope with growth in traffic, capacity constraints and demanding customer requirements. Without this improvement, it will not be possible for the railway industry to meet effectively the government's targets for moving freight and people from road to rail.Research into the use of heuristic-based approaches to timetable generation has been under way for a number of years and innovative software has now been prototyped in the UK by Railtrack that uses simulated annealing to generate timetables and score them against weighted objectives. Software tools of this type present the possibility of radically improving the timetable development process, by speeding it up and by potentially enabling a better quality output to be produced. However, they do rely heavily on the inclusion of appropriate objectives, which have hitherto never been formally documented. Through semi-structured interviews with key players within the rail industry and a small number of in-depth case studies, this research will produce a full set of objectives that should be incorporated and will provide guidance on the trade-offs made between these objectives.This work provides an essential and urgently needed input to research and development work in this area. Without this understanding of objectives on which to base the develop of software tools, there is a substantial risk that the benefits will not be achieved.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.lboro.ac.uk |