UIC’s activities in the field of railway standardisation have naturally resulted in the organisation of the First Conference on Railway Standardisation to be held on 10 June 2014 at Paris UIC headquarters.

The concept of Standardisation is to collect experience, results, make technological choices, structure and assemble them in a coherent and efficient manner, to define and ensure minimum levels of interoperability, safety and to facilitate daily operations and service.

Standardisation at UIC was re-launched following the Beijing General Assembly in December 2010 and has passed some relevant milestones: the creation of the Standardisation Platform, the introduction of the International Railway Standards, the identification of the Clusters to reconstruct the economic and technical link between standards and real service.

The First Conference on Railway Standardisation intends to give status to the practical situation of the most important phases of railway regulations and their frames of reference – through experience and results – but it mainly wants to determine a moment of reflection on the future and a strategic collective enrichment.

The views of the various stakeholders, railway companies, manufacturers and legal representatives of legal frameworks will discuss the basic requirements set by rail transport, taking into account the results able to respond to the challenges introduced by society and by the transport market.

The conference will feature speakers of renown, high-level and competence in the four sessions and they will describe the actions and the guidelines that are more functional to the achievement of the expected step-change in the sector. The audience will be offered a logical path in order to consider some key concepts that involve standardisation.

First of all, the original meaning of standardisation will be recovered as a cooperative and complementary expression of applicative knowledge by exploring the viewpoints of the various stakeholders; afterwards the legal implications, particularly with regard to interoperability and safety, will be depicted.

Specific emphasis will then be given to the development of the railway system and to the activation of the services: here the modalities for the financing and significant experiences of application of the standards are proposed to have some guidelines in the shaping of the standards. By comparison the effects of the not-standardisation are also considered.

Following the presentations, a substantial part of the conference will be reserved for answering any questions during an interactive session with the speakers.

Participation in the conference is free of charge.

The final version of the programme is available here:

http://uic.org/com/IMG/pdf/conference_on_railway_standardisation_programme.pdf

And you can register here: http://uic.org/spip.php?article3281&var_mode=calcul