Availability assessment of railway signalling systems with uncertainty analysis using Statecharts

In this paper, we propose an original simulation approach to evaluate the availability of systems in the presence of state uncertainty which arises from incompleteness or imprecision of knowledge and data. This approach is based on a simulation method combining the belief functions theory and the Statecharts. Then we propose a Statechart model of a railway signalling system, European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) Level 2 considering state uncertainty, and evaluate its availability according to the RAMS requirements defined in the railway standards. Finally we propose a sensitivity analysis to estimate the state uncertainty of which constituent system has the most significant influence on the state uncertainty of the entire ERTMS Level 2.