Linking data: Route Compatibility Check
Publication Date/Time
2022-09-30T07:00:00+00:00
Improving interoperability of European railway systems
_In our ‘Linking data’ series, we are presenting EU projects that
use linked open data (LOD)
[https://data.europa.eu/en/datastories/linking-data-what-does-it-mean].
What data is linked in their projects? Why did they decide to use LOD?
What benefits does it bring? Follow the series to find out.
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories?keywords=&country=All&year=&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC&items_per_page=10&keywords=%22Linking+data%3A+%22&merged-select=created&items_per_page=10]_

 

In this episode, we are presenting Route Compatibility Check
[https://data-interop.era.europa.eu/], an application developed by the
European Railway Agency (ERA) [https://www.era.europa.eu/]. Read on to
find out what it is, and how and why it uses LOD. 

 

EUROPEAN RAILWAY ECOSYSTEM

The EU has one of the densest railway networks in the world. However,
not all European countries have the same system of railway
infrastructure and the same set of rail vehicle types (locomotive
units, passenger cars, wagons, etc.) at their disposal.

Before placing a train or a composition of trains into operation it is
necessary to check compatibility between the rail network and the
vehicle(s). This action is called route compatibility check. To
perform the check, two types of data are necessary. Data related to
the railway infrastructure, typically provided by infrastructure
managers, and data about the rail vehicle types, typically provided by
railway operator companies. When studying and planning cross-border
routes in Europe, it is necessary to bring all this data together from
the multiple European actors involved. 

Until recently, there was no tool to enable and automate this activity
at the European level. The data was locked in two separate databases
maintained by the European Railway Agency
[https://www.era.europa.eu/]: the European Register of Infrastructure
(RINF) [https://www.era.europa.eu/registers_en#rinf] and the European
Register of Authorised Type Vehicles (ERATV)
[https://www.era.europa.eu/registers_en#eratv]. Both give access to
the data of national registers, but it is not easy to export and
compare the data. To solve this, ERA developed the Route Compatibility
Check (RCC) application
[https://www.era.europa.eu/activities/route-compatibility-check-rcc_en],
based on the ERA knowledge graph. 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/ERA_01_ERA_01_horizontal.jpeg]
 

ERA KNOWLEDGE GRAPH 

A knowledge graph, sometimes also called a semantic network,
represents a network of real-world or abstract entities (objects,
events, concepts) and illustrates the relationship between them. Data
in knowledge graphs is connected and structured using a semantic model
(a vocabulary) which defines the types of entities and relationships
that can exist in the knowledge graph and the properties that can
exist for each type of entity and relationship. 

Currently, the ERA vocabulary
[https://data-interop.era.europa.eu/era-vocabulary/] covers data
related to the European railway infrastructure and the vehicles
authorised to use it. In the vocabulary, every data concept gets a
universal resource identifier. This makes it possible to uniquely
identify and define each concept, even if one concept has, across the
databases, multiple names (labels) and/or exists in many formats. 

The ERA knowledge graph covers 27 European countries and describes
over 2 000 vehicle types, 270 000 track segments and 50 000
train stations (‘operational points’). 

 

ROUTE COMPATIBILITY CHECK 

The RCC application uses data from the ERA knowledge graph and
displays it on a simple user interface. The app allows us to answer
the following questions. 

 	*
Is this railway vehicle compatible with this route? (i.e., you can
check if a vehicle can go from point A to B). 

 	*
What are the requirements for a vehicle to go on this route? (i.e.,
you can check the technical characteristics of a piece of railway
network, which can be useful in designing a new vehicle type, for
example). 

 	*
Which route passing by point X can be taken by this railway vehicle?
(i.e., you can look for alternative routes for a given vehicle). 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Untitled-1-1.png]
 

The application is primarily designed for experts in the railway
domain (especially rail transport providers) who lack a supporting
tool to easily acquire the information necessary to perform route
compatibility checks. However, RCC is openly accessible, so everyone
can use it. 

 

THE BENEFITS OF LINKED OPEN DATA IN RCC

Thanks to LOD, data in RCC is harmonised and synchronised with the
content of the two master databases, RINF and ERATV. The tool is easy
to use and allows to save time and reduce effort. What used to require
lengthy manual checks and calculations in the past, now is provided
very quickly by RCC. 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/ERA_06_ERA_06_landscape_21.jpeg]
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/ERA_06_ERA_06_landscape1.jpeg]
 

Additionally, transforming the data from traditional databases to the
ERA knowledge graph makes them conform with the FAIR principles
[https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/], which aim to make data
more findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. What’s also
important is that this transformation has had zero impact on the data
providers. 

 

THE BENEFITS OF LINKED OPEN DATA IN THE RAILWAY DATA LANDSCAPE IN
GENERAL

RCC is only one of possible use cases of the ERA knowledge graph. A
one-off effort to map concepts and data in a knowledge graph will help
us answer other questions and solve other issues where a single
database would not be sufficient to do so. Even if new queries would
require certain additional data concepts which are not yet in the
knowledge graph, adding new data sources and concepts to an existing
knowledge graph is easy. 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/ERA_07_ERA_07_landscape.jpeg]
 

Thanks to LOD, in the future the current RCC tool structure could be
reused to answer new questions and solve other issues with minimal
modifications in the application code. The flexibility provided by
this solution perfectly fits the reality of railway domain, where new
use cases and needs for hosting new parameters in different databases
appear on a regular basis. 

 

 

 

_Useful links _

ERA vocabulary [https://data-interop.era.europa.eu/era-vocabulary/] 

ERA catalogue of SPARQL queries
[https://era-web.linkeddata.es/data-stories.html] 

Webinar: ‘European data on rails, the linked data project
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRyXYQzH1Oo]’ 

Presentation: ‘A railway knowledge graph in the EU mobility data
space
[http://chrome-extension//efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https:/fsr.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AGUADO_Florence3.pdf]’ 

Graphics used in this article
[https://gitlab.com/dataeuropa/data-provider-repository/-/tree/master/Data%20stories/Linked%20Open%20Data/LOD_Ref-data_graphics%22%20/t%20%22_blank]
(available for reuse under CC-BY-4.0) 
