The main objectives of the ESC UserGroup project are:
- to promote and facilitate the use and practical application of results from previous research projects in the field of electrical systems compatibility of railways, in particular all results from ESCARV.
- to support the efforts of the EU and of the railway industry to achieve railway interoperability in Europe
- to enhance and share the knowledge about electrical systems compatibility among all players in the railway community, with the aim to improve safety and operational reliability, and to reduce time and cost for the acceptance of new vehicles on existing railway systems.
The project contains two core elements:
1. The ESC UserGroup: a network of experts from railways, infrastructure owners, safety authorities, manufacturers, engineering and consultancy firms, and from universities and industrial research institutes.
2. The ESC InfoBank: an information management tool, implemented as relational database to be accessed via Internet by the registered members of the UserGroup.
A consortium of four partners is responsible for the InfoBank and for networking activities and events, such as a yearly workshop for all members. The consortium partners are Bombardier Transportation (Sweden), AEIF (the Association for Railway Interoperability in Europe), CIRT (the transport research institute of the University of Genoa, Italy), and ENOTRAC AG. In the consortium, ENOTRAC is in charge of the maintenance and further development of the ESC InfoBank and of the project web site. This includes the entry of information collected by the other consortium partners and by subcontractors. The aim is to collect all interference requirements and the power supply characteristics of the main railways in Europe. The members of the UserGroup are expected to contribute case histories or other valuable information from their own background for entry into the InfoBank as a 'membership fee'. In the first half of the project, a workshop in Paris has attracted more than 80 experts from all over Europe. So far, accounts for access to the ESC InfoBank have been opened for more than 120 users. The InfoBank tool and the Web site are fully operational. See
http://www.esc-usergroup.org and
http://www.esc-infobank.com. The ESC UserGroup project was participating with an exhibition stand at the EC research conference in Valencia in June 2002. At the same conference, ENOTRAC was invited by the EC to chair a conference session dedicated to electrical systems compatibility of railways.
