Despite a similar process has been already provided for the rolling stock the railway infrastructure is a more complex system where in the last years a “silent” revolution has been performed in order to face the high performances of trains (high speed trains), to attract the freight transport, to reduce the maintenance and operational costs, to comply with the local, regional regulation in terms of environmental impact.

To avoid that this revolution will create a great unbalance among regions and to support the know-how and best practices transfer it is important to assess by a consensus process at European level the following items:

• the current state of environmental performance within the railway sector, and to highlight the criticalities to become effective and practical for the internal Environmental Management system implemented by railway companies and suppliers;
• the infrastructure functional subsystems and interfaces from the environment point of view;
• balance of goods in terms of material flow, environmental key performance indicators EKPIs and relevant ranking.

Finally, as result of the three steps, the specification for the environmental part of a sustainability management system is provided and disseminated to end users (railway infrastructure managers and international organisations), to suppliers and academia (through EURNEX poles of excellence).

Other two work packages related to the management and the communication/dissemination are included in order to guarantee and to monitor the quality and effectiveness of the coordination mechanism.

InfraGuiDer has Nitel as coordinator, in the person of Dr. Marina Fracchia, and involves totally 11 partners, four railways (Network Rail, CFR S.A, Banverket and Wienen Linien), one consultant eco2win, one manufacturer BBRail Italy, and finally two universities (Birmingham and Vienna).

InfraGuidER fits with SST-2007-1.2-01 The Greening of transport-specific industrial processes.

Objective: Analysis of risk in terms of physical infrastructure and technological safety with specific attention paid to:

1. Stations.
2. Running lines.
3. Tunnels and Viaducts.
4. Command and Control Posts.
5. Technological Areas.
6. Telecommunications Infrastructure.

Phase 1 Analysis of the State of the Art

Research on the regulations, systems and laws existing in Italy, European countries, and the world regarding transportation.

Phase 2 Instruments – Methodologies

Implementation of an IT instrument for the evaluation of the vulnerability of a system and cost/benefit analysis of security apparatuses.

Phase 3 – Applications – Project Output

Proposal of a group of rules for the definition of regulatory guidlines for rail security.

NITEL – RFI – ANSALDO STS – ELSAG – SCIRO – SELEX SISTEMI

EURNEX members include 63 universities and research centres from 18 EU Member States and Russia, as well as key railway associations, such as UIC, UITP, and UNIFE.

NITEL is one of the partners in EURNEX and leader of the Pole of Excellence “Environment and Energy Efficiency”.

This project, funded by Italian government and European Structural Funds, lead by CNR, is devoted to perform a detailed analysis of technical innovative solutions to be introduced to drive bow thrusters and stabilizing fin or rudder replacing the conventional oleo dynamic solutions.

NITEL will define and compare possible innovative electrical drives, including torque motors, to be directly connected to the mechanical loads. Fincantieri CNR and some SMEs will develop the prototype and will perform the laboratory tests and sea trials.

Within this call of FP6, the railway industry elaborates the Railenergy Integrated Research Project to develop a holistic framework approach, new concepts and integrated solutions to improve energy efficiency in the railway domain under specific technical, operational, political and socio-economic constraints.

The overall objective of Railenergy is to cut the energy consumption within an optimised railway system thus contributing to a reduction in the life cycle costs of railway operation and of CO2 emissions per seat/kilometre or tonne/kilometre. The project target is to achieve a 6% reduction in the specific energy consumption of the rail system by 2020, assuming that traffic volumes double in comparison with current figures.

Within the time frame of 48 Months of project duration, the 28 consortium partners will deliver:

• Relevant baseline figures and scenarios for selected reference systems
• A system-based concept for modelling energy consumption
• A common and standardised methodology to determine energy consumption by rail sub-systems and components in the development and procurement phases
• An integrated simulation tool for energy consumption and LCC
• An integrated railway energy efficiency management approach & decision support tool
• Strategic energy efficiency targets for rolling stock, infrastructure and traffic management
• An Energy Management Module which could provide the operator with a diagnostic of their complete installation
• New validated energy efficiency-oriented railway technologies for trackside and on-board sub-systems and equipment, developed in compliance with the new integrated approach
• Refined best practices for Railway Operators and Infrastructure Managers
• Strategies for incentives, pricing, and policies

NITEL is involved in this project as Partner for “energy model” related to track side system and the traction drives.