DSS for Rescheduling of Railway Services under Unplanned Events

Abstract

In the daily activity of railway transport, the need to make decisions when faced with unforeseen incidents is a common event. Quality of service my be affected by decisions that are made by delays or cancellations. In this multi-objective scenario, there is a need to combine affecting the majority of passengers as little as possible with the minimization of costs. Therefore it is necessary to design planning algorithms taking into account factors such as the availability of engines and the quality of service. This chapter presents the design and implementation experience of a practical case developed for the Spanish Railway Company. With this tool, a DSS was put into service that guides the person in charge as to which measures to adopt with respect to the events that have arisen. The information employed is obtained by means of heuristic search algorithms based on backtracking for the exploration of the solutions space.