First Safe Computing Platform Specification Draft for Future Rail Operations is published

First Safe Computing Platform Specification Draft for Future Rail Operations is published

Digitale Schiene Deutschland has in the last months been working in a consortium of rail operators and industry partners on a first draft specification of a Safe Computing Platform for future rail operations. Through this specification, an important milestone has been achieved: a first joint proposal for a standardised interface between safety-critical railway applications and the underlying IT platform has been developed.

In the course of digitalisation, a large number of new technologies will be introduced into the railway system with high safety requirements on the IT environment as a whole. As part of the sector initiative Digitale Schiene Deutschland, DB Netz AG is working with partners to initiate and drive the development of this IT-environment forward.

The consortium of railways and industry partners DB Netz AG (Digitale Schiene Deutschland), Duagon AG, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Real-Time Innovations (RTI), SBB, Siemens Mobility GmbH, SNCF Voyageurs, SNCF Réseau, SYSGO GmbH, Thales and Wind River has cooperated since December 2021 in a project. It has now developed a first version of the possible Application Programming Interface (API) between railway applications and IT platform. The basis for this was the Safe Computing Platform Whitepaper [ref] released in the European initiative OCORA Release 1 (Open CCS Onboard Reference Architecture). The developed specification has now been published in OCORA Release 2.

The publication comprises a general definition of concepts and key design paradigms for safe communication and data processing as well as general implementation guidelines. Moreover, it was analysed whether a subset of the POSIX standard (Portable Operating System Interface), already being widely adopted across different sectors, can be reused for the envisioned API. Ultimately, the partners also identified outstanding issues which require further specification work, for instance in the Europe’s Rail programme.

Overall, the published work provides a solid basis for further specification and also prototyping of possible Safe Computing Platform implementations that is supported by major players in the sector.

Digitale Schiene Deutschland would like to thank all partners for the excellent and valuable cooperation and for wide range of contributions and perspectives over the past months.

Here you will find the publication in OCORA Release 2.

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