Modelling and simulating for optimal management of underground railway systems

The problem of determining suitable schedule for the train traffic on an underground railway network is faced in this paper. In particular lines made up of track circuits (TCs) are considered. A `tentative´ schedule Is obtained by the solution of a mathematical optimization problem, which consider a simple model. Then, a deterministic event-driven simulator receives the tentative schedule as input in order to test it on a more complete model. From this latter phase some feedback may be sent to the optimization module, so as to perform an adaptive procedure to find a schedule which satisfies both the system dynamic and safety constraints imposed by the presence of the TCs. The obtained solution is found neglecting the stochastic characteristics of the system