InnoTrans 2022 - 2nd ERA RNE Workshop Enhancing Data Interoperability in the Railway Sector

[This online workshop took place on Wednesday, September 21, 2022]

Current European railway regulatory framework defines and enforces the rail sector business to government (B2G) data exchange and defines and enforces the minimum necessary B2B data exchange between railway actors to facilitate rail operation, interoperability and safety to build the Single European Railway Area (SERA). B2G data assets detail the railway infrastructure, rolling stock and include reference data assets linked to location, organisation codes and multiple rail taxonomies. These information assets (reference data) are crucial enablers to facilitate data interoperability in the sector.

In the last few years, different initiatives and projects have been launched to promote data exchange between the different stakeholders, to facilitate data interoperability and to avoid overlap (European Union Agency for Railways interoperable data project – for the register of infrastructure (RINF), and the European Register of Authorised Types of Vehicles (ERATV) - and the publication of a core vocabulary machine readable based on current legislation, Rail Facility Portal, RNE Big Data, ELETA, Digital Train projects for example).

Based on this experience, the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) and RailNetEurope (RNE) have taken the initiative to organise two workshops to explore, together with the sector, the lessons learnt, the challenges and the opportunities for enhancing the efficiency in the management of reference data – registers - and rail data spaces.

The first workshop took place on 26 October 2021 as an online event. More than 150 participants saw a lively discussion among the panellists with active engagement from the audience. This input has been well received by the hosts as well as the European Commission. In the second workshop they would like to present a joint way forward to reach the goal of a single European data space for rail operations data for the benefit of the customers and the entire sector.