Multicriteria evaluation of variants as a decision-making support within rail-traffic simulations

Abstract

This contribution discusses different methods of automatic decision-making support in simulated railway traffic within mesoscopic simulation tools. Concretely, this article compares the method of multicriteria evaluation of variants (utilized in the process of operative control) to other optimization methods exploited within rail-traffic simulation (e.g. reflecting rail traffic within railway stations). The used simulator and its features are described, as well as its outputs, which are used for statistical evaluation of the individual supports. Further, certain methods of automatic operative control are discussed as candidates. The method of multicriteria evaluation of variants is implemented and compared to (i) priority planning and (ii) nested/recursive simulations, in terms of minimization of train delays. At the end, the results are evaluated and discussed.