Electrical dimensioning design in a railway infrastructure has high complexity and is strongly nonlinear. There are several parameters and constraints to take into account. The presented methodology is working to improve the decision making about the design, hence developing an expert system. The final set of possible solutions that the method is achieved is based on a pair of main objectives. On the one hand are installation costs, environmental impact, main electrical components costs such as catenary, traction substations, neutral zones, and the difficulty to connect substation to general electric grid. On the other hand are exploitation costs, such as maintenance costs and energy loss depending on the dimensioning design. A specific line discretization has been developed in order to distribute the critical zones along the line. Integration of a multiobjective genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), hence the code of the genotype, is another highlight. Electrical analysis, railway systems using single alternate current (1 × 25), and a simplification due to the search of the highest peaks of power demanded by the trains during simulations help to minimize the quantity of studies. Every simulation is possible by using a railway simulator, Hamlet, which provides modules such as infrastructure, rolling stock, signaling, and electrical. Designers have the possibility to analyze several scenarios with different railway exploitation critical levels, analyze electrical degraded situations, and finally obtain an optimal Pareto Front, reaching a powerful methodology to help in the electrical dimensioning design.Index Terms-Multiobjective, neutral zone, overhead contact line, traction substations, zonal discretization. 1524-9050

Abstract. The transfer of the mashup paradigm in corporate environments needs additional capabilities beyond those typically associated with consumer mashups. In this paper, we present the architecture of the FAST platform which allows creating enterprise-class and multi-channel visual building blocks (so called gadgets) in an ad-hoc manner. The design of complex enterprise-class gadgets is supported by an integrated semantic concept which hides the complexity from the actual users. The architectural components of the platform, a technical life cycle model for enterprise mashups, and the FAST gadget ontology are presented. By means of a cross-organizational real-world scenario from the marketing/ promotion event area, we demonstrate the value and potential of the FAST platform.

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Execution of the design of the signalling belonging to a railway system must take various aspects into consideration, given that all factors are interconnected. The infrastructure to be implemented must also take into account the capacity of the trains to provide the desired service, and hence to comply with expectations in the headway calculated in order to meet passenger demand. An analysis of such systems on real platforms is highly costly, one solution being first to develop simulators which can work independently and which offer reliable results in line with reality. The Hamlet tool developed at Citef (Railway Technology Research Centre of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid -UPM) is intended as a simulator capable of providing results for analysis and possibilities to optimize aspects of the infrastructure studied. This paper outlines in specific terms the techniques developed and validated for analysis of compliance with headways in operating plans and strategies for the optimization of the block distribution of lines for the purpose of improving this headway. In order to evaluate properly the developed tool and techniques, it has been analyzed a real line operated using ERTMS level 1 signalling system.

Abstract-Open Education is changing the educational paradigm. The consolidation of the OpenCourseWare initiative, supported by the top universities of the World, and the revolution generated in the recent years through the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses, present a new educational scenario for teachers, students and institutions. This new environment has furthered the use of e-learning, not only because of the benefits provided to students, such as flexibility of time and place, but also because anyone interested in training and learning, has access to a multitude of platforms with open resources and learning communities, not to mention the absence of admission processes or access requirements.The majority of times, this kind of courses will be the first contact between universities and students, which is of high importance regarding the prestige of the institutions. The formation of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people brings a challenge to teachers and their institutions, as they must be able to offer a course with very high quality to satisfy such a large number of students. For this reason, teachers need to develop new skills, such as managing multimedia elements or mass forums, to get an appropriate course to be published. As institutions are the final image and responsible for the courses, they must establish a process to monitor, facilitate and advise teachers to get an excellent final result. This paper shows the adaptation process that a group of teachers have developed in order to publish a course in the OpenCourseWare platform of the Technical University of Madrid. In this case, these teachers and a group of experts from the institution worked as a team to enhance the course before publishing it. As a result, the satisfaction perceived by the students who used these new materials was increased, and the published course has received a large amount of visitors as an Open Educational Resource.One of the strategic lines of the Open Education Office of the Technical University of Madrid is to promote the creation of Massive Open Online Courses from OpenCourseWare courses. This paper shows the benefits from this initiative. At this moment, the same group of teachers is developing the publication of this course as a Massive Open Online Course and many materials and multimedia resources need to be created. Besides, a new course design will be necessary to adapt the methodology to the massive conditions of the new model. To this point, teachers' opinions have been collected, and after the performance of this hard process, students' satisfaction and quality of the course will be measured to analyze the final results.