Systems engineering for mass transit railways

The oldest metro in the world is London Underground in the UK. More than 80% of its existing 460 km was completed before 1908. In order to ensure that the metro can be run efficiently, a programme of improvements has commenced. Systems engineering was developed in order to address the complexity of renovation projects. Such complexity usually arises when projects are multidisciplinary in terms of the technologies required for their achievement and involve practical difficulties in their definition. The authors present a discussion of the systems engineering process which is based on the assumption that it would be applied by a system operator who is also the system design and integration authority