Integrating microscopic and macroscopic models for railway network evaluation.

Microscopic and macroscopic models for transport and operational infrastructure planning are widely used by railway companies throughout the world. The presented paper describes the process of integrating these models in order to simplify the data storage, data administration and especially the process of data acquisition. The approach taken by the IVE (Institute of Transport, Railway Construction and Operation at the University of Hanover, Germany) to integrate these two models is presented. This approach will be exemplified by the integration of two models developed at the IVE (Institute of Transport, Railway Construction and Operation). The idea presented in the complete paper is to integrate the two models, which would give several advantages for railway companies. The infrastructure data has to be maintained only once in the microscopic model and can be effectively reused in the macroscopic one. In order to be able to reuse the data of the microscopic model, the generation of the macroscopic network has to be automated. Mapping of model trains on an infrastructure represented with high accuracy is realised in the macroscopic model by using functionalities of RailSys, which provides microscopically precise mapping of the infrastructure. The described procedure offers two main advantages. On the one hand, all changes to the rail network must only be updated by the infrastructure operator in the microscopically precise representation. This prevents contradictory data in different network representations. Moreover, the work required for data care is remarkably reduced. On the other hand, if the macroscopic network graph has been generated on the basis of a microscopically fine data basis, all running times and train headways can also be determined on this highly accurate basis and be transferred to the network graph. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.