Whole system railway modelling

There has been a general view articulated within the railway industry that there needs to be greater systems thinking and systems engineering applied to major projects within the industry (Network Rail, 2013 and Rail Safety and Standards Board, 2012). However, there are many differing ideas held by practising engineers of exactly what systems engineering is and how it is applied within the industry. There are also barriers within industry in general, management and practising engineers to using systems engineering techniques. They can be seen as an overhead in terms of, training, tooling, effort and costs. Also the benefits to be gained from applying these techniques are not easily seen when they work well. A key pillar of systems engineering and systems thinking is the ability to look at a system as a whole. Part of this is getting to grips with what a system really is, it’s interaction with its operational environment and the world around it and to understand the various subsystems that the system is comprised of and their interaction, including people. This is particularly difficult when it comes to complex systems like railways. This project attempts to develop an approach to modelling a whole railway system (or Guided Transport System (GTS) as it is defined in this project) by implementing a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach and techniques. It also proposes definitions of a system and system engineering that are applicable to the Railway industry. Through a common view of a GTS as a whole and a common approach to modelling it, it should be possible to address some of the barriers to systems engineering techniques that currently exist. MBSE has three pillars, a method, a modelling language and a modelling tool (Delligatti, 2014, pp. 4-7). The author has developed a method that can be applied to a whole complex system, such as a GTS, supported by the SysML modelling language implemented through the Enterprise Architect modelling tool (other languages and modelling tools could also be used). The method developed was then tested on a body of students studying for an MSc in Railway Systems Engineering and Integration at the University of Birmingham. This body was chosen because the course is part time and the majority of the students work full time in the industry. Thus the author was able to gain an insight into how diverse the opinions on systems engineering and its application actually are within the industry and get valuable feedback on the systems modelling methodology developed during this research. It has been demonstrated through the development of a partial model of various representative parts of a GTS, that it is possible, within a single model, to capture and represent a large and diverse amount of information about a GTS as it is defined within this thesis. This includes: • its context within the wider world and its operational environment; • its physical structure; • the relationships between its various subsystems and the outside world; • the views of a diverse stakeholder group and their Requirements; and • critical system properties and how these are derived from the various layers of abstraction within the system. The methodology drives the user to develop a model that: 1. is re-usable, e.g. applicable to different railways at different times; 2. is extendable in length (be able to model more railway) and depth (greater levels of detail); 3. allows the inclusion of existing quantitative and qualitative models from other sources; 4. encourages the use of data from existing sources; 5. is open and transparent to allow others to use and add to them; and 6. enables the production of outputs that are readily understandable across disciplinary divides e.g. common representation

Using Bayesian networks to represent parameterised risk models for the UK railways

PhDThe techniques currently used to model risk and manage the safety of the UK railway network are not aligned to the mechanism by which catastrophic accidents occur in this industry. In this thesis, a new risk modelling method is proposed to resolve this problem. Catastrophic accidents can occur as the result of multiple failures occurring to all of the various defences put in place to prevent them. The UK railway industry is prone to this mechanism of accident occurrence, as many different technical, operational and organizational defences are used to prevent accidents. The railway network exists over a wide geographic area, with similar accidents possible at many different locations. The risk from these accidents is extremely variable and depends on the underlying conditions at each particular location, such as the state of assets or the speed of trains. When unfavourable conditions coincide the probability of multiple failures of planned defences increases and a 'risk hotspot' arises. Ideal requirements for modelling risk are proposed, taking account of the need to manage multiple defences of conceptually different type and the existence of risk hotspots. The requirements are not met by current risk modelling techniques although some of the requirements have been addressed experimentally, and in other industries and countries. It is proposed to meet these requirements using Bayesian Networks to supplement and extend fault and event tree analysis, the traditional techniques used for risk modelling in the UK railway industry. Application of the method is demonstrated using a case study: the building of a model of derailment risk on the UK railway network. The proposed method provides a means of better integrating industry wide analysis and risk modelling with the safety management tasks and safety related decisions that are undertaken by safety managers in the industry

Perfect moments: British advertising during the 1990s - an assessment of determinants

The aim of this thesis is to consider how advertisers and their clients in the 1990s conceptualised social and technological change. In particular, I address how advertisers deduced and represented new characteristics in their customers. By reflecting on changes in the content of adverts, I take a symptomatic approach in considering how new conceptualisations were incorporated into new and broader ad styles. To do this, in Chapter 1, the Literature Review, I identify my central approach and key issues against existing literature in the field. Given that this study is essentially an industry-oriented analysis of advertising, which not been attempted this way before, I consider the relevance of existing industrial and academic-centred critical models for this study. Chapter 2 then maps out the key changes in advertising in the 1990s from previous decades. It considers what prompted the ad industries to change their perspectives and how advertisers restructured their operations in an attempt to re-imagine their consumers. In Chapter 3 benchmarks of the key changes are examined in more detail. Three campaigns are examined to explore how promotional strategies negotiated (perceived) changes in consumers. The campaigns for Britvic Tango (1992), Daewoo cars (1995) and Tesco Clubcard (1997) were chosen because they are symptomatic of key moments during the 1990s in which the way advertising targeted consumers was re-addressed. In the final part of this chapter I consider how shifting methods of advertising during the 1990s registers in the 'bigger picture' of twentieth century communication. Following the case studies, the next two chapters review two key issues for advertising during the 1990s. Chapter 4 considers how advertisers changed their tone of address. Here issues such as national/personal representation and 'boutiques of history' are considered. Most notably, changes in youth mood is considered against advertising's own strategies for coping with change. Chapter 5 then considers changes in modes of address, and in particular the impact of digital technology on advertising's means of communication. Unlike the previous chapter, which demonstrates how advertising negotiated change, this section shows how the existing agency system was forced to change. Before 1990 an attitude perSisted in the ad industry that changes to the way agencies communicated and did business was (to a large extent) determined by advertisers themselves. This was not the case in 1990s. This study maps out how change was negotiated in a climate of cultural fragmentation and digitised communication

Analysing economic regulation through institutions, finance and public law

The thesis analyses economic regulation primarily through the lenses of institutions, finance and public law. In terms of positive analysis, it focuses on post-privatisation developments in the UK. The first chapter sets out the framework of analysis. Traditional models to study economic regulation are critically assessed. It is argued that these frameworks make only partial assessments of regulation under simplified assumptions. However, it is possible to find complementarities that may serve as fundamentals for further study. Chapter II proposes to broaden the theoretical framework of analysis in three directions, with the aim of providing guidance on how to structure regulatory design in an interdisciplinary context. The third chapter deals with financial implications of regulation. The case of regulation of the capital structure of utilities firms and the regulatory assessment of the cost of capital is specifically studied in order to exemplify the control of risks under regulatory practice. In the fourth chapter the argument is extended to the analysis of the role of the State in infrastructure industries and the significant function that risk plays in economic regulation. It is argued that regulators should control focus their analysis on risk control and the avoidance of the provision of State guarantees as much as possible. Finally, chapter V looks at the role of the courts and the judicial scrutiny of sector-specific economic regulators’ decisions. Since the introduction of specialisation, judicial scrutiny is having an ever-increasing influence on substantive regulatory decisions in the UK. Despite this, some flaws in the regulatory design are highlighted, along with proposals to overcome them. The thesis concludes with some implications for policy design and the analysis of economic regulation

Finding solutions for complex systems: saving traction energy in rail

Complex optimisation problems, which are concerned with optimising a given aspect of a complex system, such as time or energy, are difficult to solve. Often a range of solutions exist, and the difficulty lies in determining which solutions to implement in which part of the system. Within this work, a novel method is developed that allows the solver to overcome the key challenges for these types of problems, which are: defining the system parts (subsystems); minimising model complexity; quantifying solution effectiveness; and identifying relationships between solutions and subsystems. The method is demonstrated through application to the problem of railway traction energy saving. Subsystems are defined using quantified network and service characteristics. For each subsystem, the trends between six key solutions and the key performance indicators are analysed using multivariate data analysis and visualisation techniques. The relationships between subsystems are then explored at system level. The analysis determines the suitable solutions for each type of railway, providing information for operators about which solutions to target. Based on the results, the implementation of permanent magnet motor technology is considered, illustrating that the method is a suitable tool for informing further studies

The Planning Act 2008: An investigation into its historical and neoliberal origins

The Planning Act 2008 introduced a new method of providing legal consent for the construction of major infrastructure projects. It addressed criticism of the existing process over deficient government policy and undefined application requirements. It provided a definition of nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) to be subject to the Act, established a procedure for parliament to designate National Policy Statements (NPS), and established the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) to examine applications under the Act (although this was abolished by later legislation). Writers on planning characterised the Act as neoliberal in a pejorative sense. The purpose of this research is to determine the validity of these assertions so that decisions on the further use of the Act’s procedures can be made on logical grounds rather than being influenced by adverse, and possibly misplaced, criticism. The work seeks a definition of neoliberalism and reviews how it has been treated in the literature, seeking definitions to judge the Act against. Three ‘characteristics’ of neoliberalism were identified: reduced democratic accountability; centralising or decentralising intentions; and business empathy and orientation. An investigation into these characteristics and the historical background of the Act was carried out using a single-phase convergent technique. Particular attention was paid to the parliamentary passage of the Act. The research concludes that the Act continues a line of development stretching back several centuries, and is not overtly neoliberal, although there are nuances in this assessment. Operating to enable development irrespective of promoters’ identity, it supports business interests. Democratic control is retained at a national level, with parliamentary processes developed to ensure NPSs are owned by Parliament, and decisions made by accountable politicians: the role of neoliberalism did not concern legislators. An effective, certain and time-limited consenting system has resulted, albeit neoliberalism appears to have had a normative influence in its production