General Train Movement Simulator (GTMS)
GTMS is a simulation-based tool that evaluates the safety risk in a specific territory and is able to make before-and-after comparisons of risk with PTC.
GTMS (which also includes robust data management and reporting capabilities) has the following components:
Train Performance Calculator – Time, speed and position are accurately replicated while accounting for resistive forces, locomotive power, braking forces, train handling, terrain and track geometry for representative trains according to forecast schedules.
Deadlock-free Traffic Control – The system traffic control module replicates dispatcher authorizations according to schedules and priorities while managing railroad operations generally, including Forms A and B speed restrictions.
Safety Modeling – Human errors and responses along with equipment failures are permitted to occur in the system and then evolve to hazards, or safe resolution. Errors, failures and downstream outcomes are driven by user-specified error and failure rates and other factors. The evolution of unsafe conditions into hazards and accidents is reflective of best available information and the simulated railroad environment.
Staged Simulation – The bottom-line metrics of the evaluation (i.e., MTTH, annual predicted accidents) are derived through an advanced simulation technique that parses the sample space to focus on paths of interest that lead to hazards and accidents. At each stage of the simulation, system states are captured and stored when events leading to accidents occur. In subsequent stages, these previous states are sampled and re-animated and further simulated until a successive event of interest or safe resolution is achieved. The staged simulation permits a straight-forward calculation of metrics of interest and the system enables second-by-second tracking of simulated accidents.
GTMS can be useful in several stages in the lifecycle deployment of PTC:
Design –While engineering analyses can test systems on a component-by-component basis, GTMS can test a deployed design concept. The system can support design by testing assumptions and identifying flaws in a simulated railroad environment that accounts for human errors, human responses and system operations.
Validation – GTMS can validate a completed PTC system to determine that it indeed delivers the planned level of safety.
Assessment – For non-vital overlay systems GTMS can perform the risk assessment required by the PTC Rule.
GTMS is the first full train movement simulator that fully integrates safety modeling with simulation of the railroad environment and enables the direct calculation of key safety risk metrics.
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