Abstract
This chapter is a case study of the dissemination of railway engineering research in Latin America developed by a railway engineering research group. The leader of the group is a female researcher. The authors aim to inspire to other women researchers in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries who are trying to develop research in IT areas, many times facing serious difficulties, incomprehension, and great challenges. This chapter is divided in set sections like introduction, background, development of railway engineering research. This third section is divided into subsections like timetable planning and trains control, characterization of Panama metro line 1, dwelling times, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence, social-economics railway externalities, and environmental railway externalities. The fourth section presents the results of the relationship between research activity and teaching of railway engineering obtained in this case study. Finally, the authors present a brief vision about future and emerging regional trends about railway engineering projects.
TopBackground
Railway engineering is considered a high technology development field with various research lines in prestigious universities, railroad research centers, and professional railway engineering associations. AI, a branch of computer sciences engineering performs tasks like visual perception, speech recognition, decision making, and translation between languages. This allows a computer program to think and learn like intelligent agents. Rail mobility, in coordination with the application of AI, can solve urban massive transit problems. There is extensive scientific literature regarding multiple applications of AI techniques in railway transportation systems. Table 1 presents these examples.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Externalities: The externalities concept corresponds to the cost that affects a third party who did not pay for this benefit. For example, in the case of railway transportation, externalities occur when the consumption of a transportation service private price equilibrium cannot reflect real costs for the general society. Types of railway externalities can include social, economic, environmental, and energy. Externalities can be either positive or negative.
Stability: The capacity of any system to recover its original state.
Recovery Time: Is a period to correct small delays in the trains.
Headway: The time distance between two successive trains on the railway track.
Dwelling Time: Is a period when a train stops in a railway station until the train moves again to the next station.
Algorithm: Is a set of well-defined rules in a procedure with the objective to find a corrected solution of a problem.
Train Diagram: Is a distance-time graphic where is showed the train paths, running times, dwelling time on a railway line.
Control Trains: Is an engineering system for monitoring and controlling train movement’s support to train protection system.
Artificial Intelligence: A branch of computer sciences engineering performs tasks like visual perception, speech recognition, decision making, and translation between languages. This allows a computer program to think and learn like intelligent agents.
Delay: Is a time deviation of a train with respect your original timetable.
Blocking Time: Is the period in which a section track authorized the use of one train and the section track is blocked to all other trains.
Railway Engineering: Is a multidisciplinary engineering discipline focused on the design, construction, operation, inspection, and evaluation of rail transportation systems like metro, railroad, commuter train, tramway, light rail, and monorail. This high-tech discipline includes a range of engineering disciplines like civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, telecommunications engineering, and railway externalities.
Fuzzy Logic: Is based on observations using decisions based on imprecise and nonnumerical information. Fuzzy models are mathematical equations that represent imprecise information in which the correct values of these variables are real numbers between 0 and 1.
Station: According UIC 406, is a point of a railway network where the train can overtake, crossing or running in reverse direction. The station is a defined place where the trains stop to passengers leave it.