As a continuation of the 15th Meeting of the Regional Assembly for the Middle-East (RAME) held on 3 May at the Dead Sea, Kingdom of Jordan, a UIC RAME Workshop was organised from 4 – 5 May for the Middle-Eastern Railways in the same location.

This workshop, planned in the 2015 – 2016 Action Plan of the UIC Middle-East Region, was opened by Mr Salah Al Louzi, Director General of the Host Railway Hejaz Jordan Railway (JHR).

Delegations from JHR and ARC (Jordan), AfRA (Afghanistan), QRC (Qatar), RAI (Iran), Saudi Arabia (SRO), TCDD (Turkey) and Libanon, (National Transport Authority) attended the UIC meetings and workshop at the Dead Sea.

The technical programme of this workshop was entirely prepared, presented and moderated by the UIC representatives, Mr Marc Antoni, Director of the UIC Rail System Department, and Mr Teodor Gradinariu, FIRSE, Senior Technical Advisor for Signalling and Asset Management within the UIC Rail System Department.

The two main parts of the technical programme were dedicated to “Signalling and ERTMS solutions for the Middle-East” on the one hand, and “Infrastructure – Asset Management” on the other hand.

In detail, the programme was as follows:

Signalling and ERTMS – possible solutions for the Middle-East

• ERTMS, which kernel for the Middle-East?
• Overview on ERTMS principles, functionalities, focusing on the Middle-East,
  needs and local specificities
• SATLOC – Low cost solution for low traffic lines – using satellite technology
• UIC – movie on SATLOC
• SATLOC, a successful proof of concept – an innovative Traffic Control Centre
• State-of-the-art and future radio links for ERTMS (the future of GSM-R, next generation solutions (GPRS and LTE), challenges for the Middle-East
• The challenges of the Critical IT System – Safety – Security – sustainability – (application to the complex IT systems such as ERTMS)

Asset Management

• Asset Management: Principles, etc.
  How to use Modelling for Asset Management
• Asset Management: Results of the AM WG – benchmark (LICB)
• Asset management of HSL (High Speed Lines)

The workshop enabled lively discussions to be held between the UIC speakers and the attending delegations.

All presentations of this workshop will be made available to UIC Members within a few weeks on a CD ROM (UIC RAME Workshop “Signalling and ERTMS solutions – Asset Management”, 4 – 5 May 2015, Dead Sea.

The SATLOC video coordinated by UIC with the support of the European Commission was also presented to participants at this workshop