Ms Sophie Damy, PhD student in the Centre for Transport Studies has won 2nd prize in the rail category at the 2014 TRA Visions competition

The TRA visions student competition aims at simulating the interest of young researchers in the field of surface transport. The prize was awarded by Mr Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, the UIC Director General, during the opening ceremony of the Transport Research Arena (TRA) Conference on the 15th of April in Paris.

Sophie’s project, SPoT (Smart Positioning of Trains) aims to develop a novel positioning system to support a wide range of railway services while ensuring the safety of operations. The system will be based on the use of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver to estimate the train position integrated with additional systems, sensors and spatial databases. The integration will provide continuous estimation of the train location in all environments, including tunnels and stations. Sophie’s PhD research project is expected to play a key role in the railway network capacity increase and development of the European Railway Train Management System (ERTMS).