iDaDiS project – Deriving the ideal data requirements for a digital rail network
In an increasingly networked world, digitalisation forms the backbone of modern administrative processes and opens up new opportunities to improve efficiency, transparency and collaboration in the rail sector. The Federal Railway Authority (EBA) and the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV) are often confronted with inadequate databases and very heterogeneous data structures when fulfilling their sovereign tasks. This makes day-to-day work more difficult and prolongs the authorities' planning, authorisation and control processes.
The German Centre for Rail Traffic Research (DZSF) has therefore commissioned the research project "iDaDiS" (Derivation of ideal data requirements for a digital rail network) to coordinate the digitalisation processes in German rail transport. By the beginning of 2027, engineers and computer scientists from Bahnkonzept GmbH Germany in Dresden, supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), will investigate and describe how a standardised data structure for official processes in the German rail network can be sensibly developed. The aim of the two-year project is to support the tasks of the EBA and BMDV with centralised, more usable data management. It will analyse which data requirements exist and how these can be linked in a common system based on use case descriptions. Among other things, the aim is to examine how network condition data can be used systematically and efficiently to simulate the performance and operational quality of the German rail network. Other use cases include combating rail noise, crisis management and investment management. The aim is to identify data gaps and inconsistencies, consistently avoid duplicate maintenance and data silos and develop a structure for data storage and exchange based on established standards.
As experts in the digitalisation of railway data, the Saxon infrastructure experts from Bahnkonzept and DLR can also draw on many years of experience, for example from the "Infrastructure Database for Regional Railway Lines" (Indres) project from the BMDV's mFund funding programme. In cooperation with the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), a database for infrastructure data from non-federally owned railway infrastructure companies was developed and has already been created as a standardised and reusable database for two railways in Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.