Integrated Approach for the Adjustment of Disruption Programs to the Actual Infrastructural Availability

So-called disruption programs (DRP) are used to deal with suddenly occurring disruptions in commuter railway systems. Since the creation of DRPs is a complicated task, they regularly to support disruptions that result due to the failure of a given set of infrastructural elements (e.g. signal boxes). In case a disruption affects a combination of infrastructural elements that are not explicitly covered by available DRPs, their benefits would be highly affected. Therefore, it becomes necessary to derive approaches that allow an ad-hoc adjustment of the DRPs to the actual infrastructure availability. This article proposes an approach supporting the adjustment of a manually chosen DRP to the actual infrastructural availability. The approach performs the adjustments by means of a heuristic method. The heuristic method uses a local search to derive the necessary adjustments on the operational measures in the operating concept of the chosen DRP that are conflicting with the actual infrastructural availability. The local search method allows to minimize the extent of the adjustments, as it is considered that the optimal solution resides in the vicinity of the chosen DRP. Ultimately, the adjusted operating concept alternatives generated by the heuristic are assessed to ensure their operational and passenger-transport feasibilities.