Hybrid Intelligence for Smarter Railways: Advancing Real-Time Dispatching in Europe
A Unite! seed-funded project explores new methods to revolutionise railway traffic control through hybrid approaches.
Digital transformation in railway systems is gaining speed, but real-time traffic control (also known as dispatching) remains a major challenge. Dispatching involves constantly monitoring train movements and adjusting schedules in response to unexpected events, a highly complex process.
The complexity of the process arises from the fact that the schedule can be adjusted through a series of different dispatching decision, each of which may induce follow-up conflicts within the system. Choosing the best possible decision requires then exploring a tree of effects that grows rapidly the deeper it is analysed, in other words, a complex (i.e. NP-complete) problem. Existing tools offer only limited support, often covering isolated sub-tasks with modest solution quality.
To address these gaps, a Unite! seed-funded research initiative investigate hybrid methods that combine exact, heuristic and machine learning techniques. The aim is to develop practical, high-quality approaches that enhance real-time schedule adjustments and increase the resilience and capacity of railway systems.
The project pursue two main objectives: conducting exploratory and experimental research on hybrid strategies, and jointly developing a competitive proposal for external funding under Horizon Europe. As part of this effort, the team also plans to establish a supranational “Railway Operations Lab”, creating a long-term collaborative platform to develop next-generation decision-support systems.
The project built on an active collaboration among researchers with deep knowledge of railway operations and optimisation methods. The team has already submitted a joint abstract to the AI4RailS conference and continues to strengthen scientific and organisational ties within the Unite! Alliance and beyond.