This afternoon we will once again share our optimisation technics with the students of the Master degree in Statistics and Operations Research (OR) from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL).
In this year’s Seminar, our expert in OR and school alumni Carlos Iglésias, will speak about our most recent product RAILNODE, and the optimisation problem it solves: the individual planning of each station. Knowing, for each station, its topology (i.e., platforms, parks, switches and all sections where trains run) and the trips that arrive at and depart from them (characterised by the timetable and composition of each train), the aim is to determine the movements of the trains and respective stopping locations. This includes all movements between the station boundaries, its platforms and parks.
Solving the problem involves decomposing it into several sub-problems, which are individually solved using MILPs, Simulated Annealing and specialised heuristics.
The solution must respect the safety rules of circulation inside the station, avoiding collisions, and cannot have trains that block the exit of others from the parks. The objective is to minimise the operational costs involved, namely, displacements and investments.
The solution obtained is then integrated into the vehicle planning at the level of the entire network.
To illustrate these concepts, a brief demonstration of the RAILNODE product will be made.