The following research elements shall be delivered:

• Benchmark on existing solutions of integrated rail and air traffic;
• Integration of aviation and railway transport modes. Development of tools, digital platforms and services for a better integration of aviation and railway transport modes, as part of an intermodal transport ecosystem expected to optimise multimodal mobility. (Further details in the Funding&Tenders).

Research may also address:

• Post-operations analysis capabilities to allow both air and railway transport stakeholders to better plan operations and resources in the future aiming at a continuous improvement of intermodal operations;
• Use of AI/ML to support the optimisation of the ATM-rail multimodal interface developing smart digital solutions to streamline the management of multimodal air-rail transport flows (e.g. AI/ML-powered demand-driven predictions of flights, trains, passengers and departure/arrival queues/sequences for improving operations efficiency and for service offer across air-rail modes accommodating as much door-to-door journeys as possible, etc.);
• Business intelligence and machine learning to help intermodal stakeholders collaboration to align process and resource capacity with predicted demand to reduce queues.

An integrated aviation-railway transport network disruption and crisis management process. Enable the coordination – when managing disruption and crisis – between air and railway transport modes and a multitude of actors, including local and national authorities’ representatives. Research shall address the definition of the required data exchange for a situation of disruptions and crisis. The research should also lead to proposals for mitigation measures based on the timely acquisition and sharing of information, as well as it should consider a broad set of threats affecting, directly or indirectly, the intermodal system e.g. terrorism, volcanic ash dispersions, hazardous chemicals events, spread of diseases/pandemic, earthquakes, flooding, major failure of a pan-European function, (massive) cyberattack, etc. The proposal may include simulation scenarios to validate applicable use cases e.g. airport closure, rail strike, etc.

Additionally, the project to be funded under this topic shall:

• Target maturity level is TRL6 and validation activities should be defined accordingly. In particular, activities including system, subsystems model/prototypes in a relevant end-to-end environment;
• Propose a concept of operations (ConOPs) and high-level architecture of the proposed solution(s), further detail them into operational scenarios / use cases, leading to the definition and validation of requirements/specifications for data exchange, also in real-time, related to available capacity, disruptions, etc., and consequent respective airport operations – ATM – rail networks integration. Include a CBA for the proposed solutions ;
• Consider the following potential scenarios:
  • City pairs from different EU Member States, which have both airports and high-speed train connections;
  • International airport hub connected to a high-speed railway station. This scenario may also consider other transport modes serving and/or connecting both the airport and railway station if applicable e.g. local / regional train operators, local bus lines, trams, metros, taxis etc.;
  • Regional rail line serving a smaller (regional) airport. This may also consider as well other transport modes.
• Consider standards whenever possible, especially important with data sharing, integration of different transport modes, combination of ATMS and TMS and creation of new tools;
• Take into consideration the following reference material:
  • The interfaces definition should consider:
    • From SESAR: European ATM Architecture (EATMA) and the relevant links to elements in the ATM architecture (e.g. capabilities, systems);
    • From EU-Rail: Conceptual Data Model (CDM), the work done within Shift2Rail TD2.9 on TMS.
  • The EU Data Strategy which aims to create a Common European Mobility Data Space. Please consider also the existing work of EU-Rail (Flagship Project 1 – MOTIONAL, Federated Data Spaces) for building a trusted, reliable, cybersecure federated data space for the rail ecosystem – the Rail Data Space. The Rail Data Space provides exchange and sharing of digital resources across Rail operators, Infrastructure Managers and Suppliers as a component in the creation of a Common European Mobility Data Space. It is compliant with the principles of the European Strategy for Data, e.g., Data Sovereignty, Data level playing field, public-private Governance and Decentralized soft infrastructure.
  • State-of-the-art documentation on existing solutions on integrated rail and air traffic.
• Involve relevant stakeholders from at least two EU Member States:
  • From the air sector perspective the proposals should foresee participation of, at least, airspace users (AUs) and airport operators;
  • From the rail sector perspective the proposals should foresee participation of, at least, High speed train operators, infrastructure managers and TMS operators, as well as regional/capillary line operators and TMS operators;
  • Research may include (if required) other stakeholders e.g. urban transport operators (metro, bus, etc.);
  • The inclusion of other modes of transport (e.g., UAM, cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM), etc.) will be considered advantageous, in order to provide a full door-to-door experience validation.
• Take into consideration the existing work developed within SESAR and EU-Rail (especially IP4 projects, Flagship Project 1 ) in terms of state-of-the-art of existing solutions, tools, algorithms and approaches (e.g. passenger flow, predictions and traffic modelling, total airport management concept, etc.);
• Address data confidentiality e.g. GDPR aspects, as well as the approach on data sharing (including dataspaces tackled within EU-Rail project FP1-MOTIONAL);
• Address (cyber)security and safety aspects of the proposed architecture in close collaboration with the System Pillar. Also, the availability and integration of external services able to supply data and information to the air and rail network management systems to improve air-rail intermodality shall be investigated.