Schematic representation of the geographical railway network used by the Swedish Transport Administration

Abstract

Today, one of the needs of the railway information systems is sharing the precise and exact data among varieties of stakeholders. In addition, efficient use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) encourages the railways administrations to centralize their data and prepare an information model whose purpose is to reduce the demands associated with the transformation of the data. One such reduction of data handling is to be able to extract both geographical and schematic representations from the same database.
Currently, one difficulty which encountered by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) is that different representations (geographical and schematic) have to be updated separately is imposing larger costs and they have a possibility of inconsistency in accuracy of these two representations. However, when the information model was initially developed, the schematic representation was not a requirement; subsequently, there might be some unresolved issues associated with updating these representations.
This research is aimed to examine ArcGIS Schematics extension for automatically generating the schematic map from a geographical database that is suitable for railway applications. In addition, it wants to evaluate the data in the current database provided by the Trafikverket for creating the schematic maps as a suitable input for ArcGIS Schematics. The results show that the ArcGIS Schematics extension can automatically creates the schematic map for railway networks, and it makes the situations much easier for Trafikverket that currently they create the schematic maps manually. In addition, the evaluation of current data uses in Trafikverket shows that the ArcGIS Schematics extension is matched with their data, but some improvements must be done on their data.

Popular Abstract

Today, efficient use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) encourages the railways administrations to centralize their data. Therefore, they extract both geographical and schematic representations from the same database. But, one difficulty which encountered by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) is that different representations (geographical and schematic) have to be updated separately is imposing larger costs and they have a possibility of inconsistency in accuracy of these two representations. Thus, this research aims at examining ArcGIS Schematics extension for automatically generating the schematic map from a geographical database that is suitable for railway applications. In addition, it wants to evaluate the data in the current database provided by the Trafikverket for creating the schematic maps as a suitable input for ArcGIS Schematics.
The results show that the ArcGIS Schematics extension can automatically create and update the schematic map for railway networks, and it makes the situations much easier for Trafikverket while currently they create the schematic maps manually. In addition, the evaluation of data that Trafikverket uses currently, shows that the ArcGIS Schematics extension is matched with their data, but some improvements must be done on their data model. A new attribute for defining the types of different parts of tracks must be added to their data model. Therefore, it must be defined that the train across from a Through route and go directly or across from a Diverging route which is used for changing the route and connecting different routes. Moreover, controlling the topological maps regarding the accuracy of data has been important.

Popular Abstract (Swedish)

Idag vill man effektivisera användningen av geografiska informationssystem (GIS), vilket uppmuntrar järnvägsförvaltningarna att centralisera sina data. Därför hämtar de både geografiska och schematiska framställningar från samma databas. Men, en svårighet som möter Trafikverket är att olika representationer (geografiska och schematiska) måste uppdateras separat, vilket innebär större kostnader och kan innebära inkonsekvens i riktigheten av dessa två representationer. Således, denna forskning syftar till att undersöka hur ArcGIS Schematics automatiskt kan generera den schematiska kartan från en geografisk databas som är lämplig för järnvägsapplikationer. Dessutom vill den utvärdera om de data som finns i den aktuella databasen som tillhandahålls av Trafikverket kan användas för att skapa schematiska kartor som en lämplig ingång för ArcGIS Schematics.
Resultaten visar att ArcGIS Schematics automatiskt kan skapa och uppdatera schematiska kartor över järnvägsnäten. Detta gör framställningen av schematiska kartor mycket lättare för Trafikverket, medan de för närvarande skapar de schematiska kartorna manuellt. Dessutom, utvärderingen visar att av de data som används av Trafikverket för närvarande kan matchats med ArcGIS Schematics, men vissa förbättringar måste göras på deras datamodell. En ny egenskap måste adderas till datamodellen, som definierar typer av olika delar av spår. Därför måste definieras om tåget är på en genom väg och åker direkt eller över från en divergerande väg som används för att ändra rutten och ansluta olika vägar. Dessutom, kontrollera topologiska kartor för att förbättra riktigheten i data har varit viktigt.

• author: Seyedi-Shandiz, Samanah
• supervisor: Lars Harrie; Thomas Norlin; Jenny Rassmus
• organization: Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
• course: GISM01 20142
• year: 2014
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• keywords: schematic Diagram, geographical representation, schematic representation, GIS, ArcGIS Schematics, physical geography, ecosystem analysis
• publication/series: LUMA-GIS Thesis
• report number: 34
• language: English
• additional info: External supervisors: Thomas Norlin and Jenny Rassmus, Trafikverket.
• id: 4697823
• date added to LUP: 2014-10-15 10:25:36
• date last changed: 2014-10-15 10:25:36