Interaction of lifecycle properties in High Speed Rail systems operation

High-Speed Rail (HSR) has been expanding throughout the world, providing various nations with alternative solutions for the infrastructure design of intercity passenger travel. HSR is a capital-intensive infrastructure, in which multiple subsystems are closely integrated. Also, HSR operation lasts for a long period, and its performance indicators are continuously altered by incremental updates. With this background, design and monitoring of lifecycle properties, or "ilities", is an important factor to achieve long-term successful operation. This thesis aims to analyze and evaluate dynamic behaviors of "ilities" and their interactions in HSR operation. After the literature review and the study of industrial trends about HSR "ilities", safety, availability and profitability are chosen as key "ilities" which should be monitored in HSR operation. The Tokaido Shinkansen in Japan, and Amtrak's service in the US Northeast Corridor (NEC) are chosen as cases to study "ilities" trends. In the Tokaido Shinkansen, three "ilities" form a positive feedback loop to make HSR operation successful. The NEC shows high profitability, but it does not perform as well in terms of safety and availability due to several systemic factors. System Dynamics (SD) is applied to visualize interactions of "ilities" and other variables of interest. Qualitative causal loop diagrams (CLD) reveal several feedback loops affecting "ilities". In particular, the integration of train operation and infrastructure / rolling stock management results in the emergence of major feedback loops which cannot easily be captured by other methodologies. Qualitative SD models are converted into quantitative SD models, and numerical simulations are run to further understand the structure of causal loop diagrams. Estimated parameters in the Tokaido and the NEC suggest the different relationships among "ilities" and other variables. Further, sensitivity analyses are conducted to evaluate how different policies affect "ilities" in future HSR operations.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Doi, Tatsuya

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Joseph M. Sussman and Olivier L. de Weck.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105565

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/105565