Towards a Digital Twin of Trieste Port Rail System

The Port of Trieste represents the first Italian port with respect to both the total annual throughput and the railway share for freight transfers to/from the hinterland. In response to a commission awarded by the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea within the European project “REIF”, the cooperation between ESTECO and Lift s.r.l. has led to the development of a methodology which aims at modeling, simulating and optimizing railway processes in the Port of Trieste, in order to build its digital twin. More specifically, Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) as implemented in Cardanit (R) has been used to efficiently display and analyze train arrival and departure processes, including also the transfers of individual shunting locomotives. The developed BPMN models represent not only the port railway operations, but also the documentary procedures necessary to perform such activities. For simulation purposes, the BPMN models have been integrated with BPSim, which is a standard protocol for parameterization and data exchange. Then, the actual execution of the represented processes has been performed by a discrete event simulation tool enabling the identification of process bottlenecks and the appraisal of the port railway capacity based on some operational parameters. Finally, the optimization procedure has been carried out using modeFRONTIER (R), by means of a black box that integrates BPMN, BPSIM and the discrete event simulation tool used. A set of optimal solutions to maximize capacity have been provided by modeFRONTIER: such results will be considered to define both the final infrastructural layout of the Port of Trieste and the one concerning the various intermediate work phases, so as to guarantee the seamless performing of railway operations.

Authors: Greta Busseni, Caterina Caramuta, Giovanni Longo, Teresa Montrone, Carlo Poloni, Laura Ricco, Enrico Rigoni, Alessandro Turco