Successful UIC-RZD Digital Conference held on 30 November 2016 in St Petersburg

“More trains, More connections, Better services for our customers”

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In the framework of the UIC statutory meetings, UIC and Russian Railways (RZD) organised a digital conference on the theme “More trains, More connections, Better services for our customers” on 30 November in St Petersburg.

This conference follows a series of events already planned since the creation of the UIC Digital Platform one year ago in November 2015 and which brought together representatives of the digital field among UIC Members at global level.

On 30 November 2016, this second digital conference brought together representatives of UIC Members as well as start-ups and actors in the digital field.

Mr Evgeny Charkin (IT Director of the JSC “Russian Railways”), who became Co-Chairman of the UIC Digital Platform during the UIC General Assembly on 1 December, and Mr Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, Director General of UIC, introduced the conference.

Mr Charkin said: “Regarding big data and IoT, we need to share knowledge, we need to benchmark. We also need standards as we talked about global infrastructure. And as shown today, we have started to build our eco-system together. Presentations given by start-ups were bright and had great potential. We have to continue to build this eco-system to face further digital challenges”.

Mr Loubinoux said: “We are living today in the Digital Era. Today, digital is everywhere. Transport modes and railways as the backbone must take advantage of this new opening. This is not an option…this is imperative. The role of UIC is to provide input, to provide the development framework of a Digital Hub; this role is not to develop projects for itself. Our motto is “Share-open-connect”; open up the relationship with incubators, universities, start-ups. We can all take benefit from this cooperation (not competition!). Share vision, best practices, data. Connect to each others, to others. That is the sense and philosophy of our 1st UIC Digital Awards! The next steps will be to go further with, among others, the development of several Proof of Concepts and then possible IRS. All these developments are included in the UIC Digital Progress paper available online on the UIC website”.

Around 10 presentations were given during this conference, highlighting different aspects around three main themes:

“More trains/ freights/ passengers”
“Better connectivity”
“More services to clients”

This conference gave participants from all continents and from the railways as well as start-ups the opportunity to share the latest information on these themes and hold lively discussions.
During this conference, the three winners of the 1st UIC Digital Awards also had the opportunity to present their projects to railway CEOs in the categories Productivity (the winner was start-up Datadvance, from Russia), Services (the winner was start-up Glowee from France), Safety (the winner was start-up Borna, from Iran).

More details on the presentations as well as on the 1st UIC digital Awards will be published in the next UIC eNews.