Engineering 2 (2016) 366–373
Research
Rail Transit—Article
High-Speed Railway Train Timetable Conflict Prediction Based on
Fuzzy Temporal Knowledge Reasoning
He Zhuang
a,b
, Liping Feng
a,
*, Chao Wen
a,d
, Qiyuan Peng
a,c
, Qizhi Tang
b
a
School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China
b
China Railway Corporation, Beijing 100844, China
c
National United Engineering Laboratory of Integrated and Intelligent Transportation, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China
d
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo N2L 3G1, Canada
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 5 May 2016
Revised form 19 August 2016
Accepted 13 September 2016
Available online 21 September 2016
Trains are prone to delays and deviations from train operation plans during their operation because
of internal or external disturbances. Delays may develop into operational conflicts between adjacent
trains as a result of delay propagation, which may disturb the arrangement of the train operation
plan and threaten the operational safety of trains. Therefore, reliable conflict prediction results can be
valuable references for dispatchers in making more efficient train operation adjustments when conflicts
occur. In contrast to the traditional approach to conflict prediction that involves introducing random
disturbances, this study addresses the issue of the fuzzification of time intervals in a train timetable
based on historical statistics and the modeling of a high-speed railway train timetable based on the
concept of a timed Petri net. To measure conflict prediction results more comprehensively, we divided
conflicts into potential conflicts and certain conflicts and defined the judgment conditions for both.
Two evaluation indexes, one for the deviation of a single train and one for the possibility of conflicts
between adjacent train operations, were developed using a formalized computation method. Based
on the temporal fuzzy reasoning method, with some adjustment, a new conflict prediction method is
proposed, and the results of a simulation example for two scenarios are presented. The results prove
that conflict prediction after fuzzy processing of the time intervals of a train timetable is more reliable
and practical and can provide helpful information for use in train operation adjustment, train timetable
improvement, and other purposes.
© 2016 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and
Higher Education Press Limited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords:
High-speed railway
Train timetable
Conflict prediction
Fuzzy temporal knowledge reasoning
1. Introduction
Trains are likely to deviate from train operation plans during
their operation and produce headway and route conflicts as a
result of the influences of factors such as the weather, geological
conditions, and driver and train performance. Therefore, dis
-
patchers often need to make some adjustment to conflicts, on the
premise of keeping subsequent operation plans unchanged, and
without considering disturbances. Obviously, these assumptions
do not align well with the real world. Previous studies on the
train delay propagation law [1–3], the dynamic properties of train
delays [4,5], and the operation adjustment decision making have
proposed adjusting the buffer time as the major way to eliminate
headway conflicts or having simulated subsequent train opera
-
tions by introducing stochastic disturbances [6–10]. Considering
that the train timetable is operated periodically and that daily
delay information including where, when, and how long can be
recorded, we can sum up the delay distribution law and obscure
the time interval in a train timetable in order to simulate the sub
-
sequent train operation status based on these historical time data.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: lipingfeng@my.swjtu.cn
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.ENG.2016.03.019
2095-8099/© 2016 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press Limited Company.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eng
Engineering