Optimal Driving Profiles in Railway Systems based on Data Envelopment Analysis

The present study focuses on the development of a dynamically re-configurable Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure to support the sustainable development of railway network. Once data have been collected, the extracted knowledge is used to develop a set of applications that can improve the energy efficient operation of railway systems. A typical example includes the identification of the optimal driving profiles in terms of energy consumption. In the present study, this is achieved through the adoption of an optimization framework based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated based on actual data collected at an operation tramway system. Preliminary results illustrate that when the proposed method is applied, a 10% reduction in the overall power consumption can be achieved.