Slovak Level Crossings - Present State and Knowledge-Based Approach to Diagnostics

What is it about?

This paper consists of three principal parts. The first part discusses the problem of safety of Slovak level crossings, seen through the statistic data, and explains distinctive features identified on the basis of comparison with level crossings operated in other EU countries. The second part deals with the knowledge-based approach applied to diagnostics of electronic/computer-based level crossing installations. In the last part, the authors present their methodology which has been designed and which is to be applied to the level crossing systems of a particular producer, and describe possible architectures of such a system.

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Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash

Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Authors have concentrated on characteristics of present conditions at Slovak LCs, their particularities have been pointed out, and statistical data has been presented so as to structure this data, its versions, and trends. Main attention has been paid to the knowledge-based approach to diagnostics of computer LC safety systems. The paper results in a summary of ways of problem dealing. As an outcome, the methodology for such a diagnostic system has been introduced and possible system architectures outlined. The next direction of research work in this area should lead to the implementation of proposed methods into an application for diagnostics of real LC system BUES 2000 [20]. The diagnostic system actually running upon BUES 2000 is able to read communication on the control level and to store corresponding parts of this communication in case unexpected behavior is detected. A human expert is then needed to analyze the data and to identify and localize the failure. Diagnostic data is available in the form of telegrams having the structure “yyyy xx xx xx xx xx mm ss hh”, where “y” stands for identification of a sender, “x” for information part of telegram, and “mmsshh” for the time of dispatch.