A plan to ensure maximum coverage 4G on all linee AV within the next 18 months. And an investment of 2 billion euros to extend and enhance the dark optical fiber along 17 thousand kilometers of railway network. Here are the two projects innovation e digitization that will improve the Italian railway service and its infrastructures in a sustainable way. “We have put innovation and digitization as enabling elements of our ten-year Business Plan, which it envisages 190 billion in investments focused on physical infrastructure, development of logistics and collective passenger transport. A first goal that we have set ourselves is to create common platforms that allow us to communicate between the various souls of our reality, such as stations and trains “.
To speak is theCEO of the FS Italiane Group Luigi Ferraris. Who, speaking of High Speed, does not fail to specify that 4G will also have to serve regional convoys and buses. As regards optical fiber, the investment (2 billion euros included in the Program Agreement functional to the technological upgrading of the lines and to develop widespread connectivity) aims to implement it especially in rural areascrossed by the tracks but often not adequately covered by Tlc signals. For Ferraris, the priority is to obtain integrated platforms “with a view to improving passenger life, for digitization capable of simplifying travel and at the same time improving infrastructure monitoring, especially in a historical moment like this dominated by climate change” .
In the field of innovation, FS’s latest advances are remarkable. The company was awarded – through its subsidiaries – the first six projects for railway research and innovation with a multi-year duration (value 568.4 million euros) of the public-private partnership Europe’s Rail, of which he is a founding member. The call concerns the management of the European railway network, automation and digitization of railway operations, sustainable and resilient systems, rail freight transport and regional and capillary lines. In the sign of a broadening of horizons, this first Europe’s Rail tender 2022 has been open to all companies in compliance with the participation requirements of Horizon Europe (EU framework program for research and innovation 2021-2027). More than 200 operators from 14 different statescommitted to developing innovative ideas for the European railway of tomorrow.
Innovation is always the protagonist of Next Stopthe new FS podcast already available on Spotify and on the platform Spreaker. Empathic robots, quantum computers, but also the study and analysis of data and how to move around cities. These are the great themes of innovation which, approximately every 15 days, thanks to the participation of experts from the academic and research world, will help listeners to understand how digitalization is profoundly changing the approach and way of being of the railway world.
The podcast is projected into a not too distant and increasingly digital future, towards which the European Union has aimed with its Next Generation EU plan. In the first episode we talked about artificial intelligence. Alessandra Sciutti, researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, addressed the study of human emotions in relation to robotics through the development of Affective Computing. Roberto Tundo, Chief Innovation & Digital Officer of the Group, on the other hand, has the impact ofAI (Artificial Intelligence) on corporate strategies. The second episode, on the other hand, dealt with the future of mobility.