Bi-Weekly Talk: Rebecca Haehn: Freight Train Scheduling in Railway Systems

Wednesday, February 19, 2019, 10:30am

Location: RWTH Aachen University, Department of Computer Science - Ahornstr. 55, building E3, room 9u10

Speaker: Rebecca Haehn

 

Title: Freight Train Scheduling in Railway Systems

Abstract: The railway infrastructure is highly utilizeddue to the increasing demand for public transportation and rail freighttransportation. Since changes and extensions of the infrastructure requireexpensive and lengthy construction work, the existing infrastructure capacityhas to be exploited as best as possible, which requires optimized timetables.Passenger train timetables in Europe are usually periodical and predeterminedfor longer periods of time to facilitate the planning of travel. Freight trainschedules, however, often depend on the actual demand. Therefore it is a commonproblem in railway systems to schedule additional freight train requests. Inthe process, the given timetable for passenger trains has to be considered,because passengers usually do not desire disruptions. In this talk approachesto solving this problem based on a macroscopic model of the railway system willbe presented.