by Katharina Gerstmann, CORE2018 Conference Chair
The RTSA’s Conference on Railway Excellence (CORE2018) will be held at the International Convention Centre in Sydney on 30 April to 2 May 2018, and planning is well underway.
The CORE2018 organising committee has been working hard over the last 12 months bringing the best of ideas and people to the conference and Sydney.
The theme of CORE2018 is ‘Rail: smart, automated, sustainable’. Technology is constantly evolving, and this has presented both solutions and challenges in the way we plan and deliver rail services and infrastructure.
The conference will provide a knowledge exchange platform between emerging technologies and our existing infrastructure and projects, maximising the efficiency and benefits for the end customer and industry.
It will broadly cover all disciplines of railway from fundamental research to “blue sky” applications, highlight global scientific interactions and collaborations, and feature the unique location, culture and beautiful geography of Sydney.
The program structure of previous years has been maintained given the expectations of delegates, however the CORE2018 Committee has slightly departed from the traditional discipline-based streaming, in order to encourage papers in business focus areas that are emerging in many railways, particularly in assurance and customer facing systems.
We have had an excellent response to the Call for Papers, almost doubling the number sought. Inevitably, in some specialist areas, the abstracts were over represented and papers of high standard have “missed the cut”.
The success of CORE conferences is underpinned by the technical program.
Although we have not been able to include all papers at CORE2018, we urge authors to continue to submit papers to future CORE or RTSA Conferences. The Technical Committee, chaired by John Watsford, is currently reviewing the full length papers prior to final decision.
Collating the technical reviews of all papers is an involved and time consuming process, which is essential to sustain the high standards of the conference.
For CORE2018 we expect to attract 700 attendees focused on rail transport issues representing all rail related disciplines from engineering research and practice, private industry, and governments. We especially welcome young professionals, researchers and students, and will have dedicated events for them — the future generation.
The success of a conference is thanks to many people and organisations, particularly our generous partners: Transport for NSW, ARTC, Aurizon, WSP, SNC Lavalin, Speno, Institute of Railway Technology, Pandrol and Geofabrics, as well as our Media Partner Infrastructure Magazine and Supporting Partner Railway Gazette.
There are still a number of partnership opportunities available in a variety of categories and commensurate exposure.
The Committee also welcomes partnership suggestions from you and invites you to contact the conference manager, Anthony Bordignon – Engineers Australia, to discuss your organisation’s desired partnership objectives.
Our keynote and invited speakers come from around the world, representing the very best in their field of expertise.
Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, was appointed Director-General of the International Union of Railways (UIC), the worldwide association representing the rail sector and encompassing 240 railways across all continents in 2009.
Prior to joining UIC, he was Chairman and CEO of French railways SNCF International and SNCF Director of International Development from 2001 to 2009, having been appointed Chief Executive of SNCF Freight International in 2001.
Leslie Woo, Chief Planning Officer at Metrolinx, Ontario Canada – described as The Transit Changemaker by Spacing Toronto in 2016 and awarded Canada’s Women’s Infrastructure Network’s 2015 Outstanding Leader.
Leslie is a passionate and influential strategist on urban planning issues internationally and has been leading the transformation of Canada’s largest and fastest growing metropolitan centre for over twenty years, shaping multi-billion dollar infrastructure investments.
US based Sally Dominguez is confirmed to take on the role as Master of Ceremonies for CORE2018. Most of you will know Sally in her role as a judge on ABC TV’s New Inventors for six years and she currently judge’s product design in the USA and China, and Car of the Year in Australia.
RTSA and UIC have joined forces for CORE2018 to provide even more value to delegates, speakers and exhibitors.
Not only has UIC agreed to provide its Director General as Keynote Speaker, but will also run a workshop on Automated Trains Protection on Thursday, 3 May 2018. Details will be published as soon as they become available.
Both organisations have a shared vision to propose new ways to improve technical and environmental performance of rail transport.
Working together will be of enormous benefit to the industry and its participants.
In addition, and following the great success from last year’s CORE in Melbourne, we have taken on board again the ‘Knowledge Zone’ in cooperation with ACRI, the Australasian Centre for Rail Innovation.
We are also having a shared plenary session and technical stream with our colleagues from the System Engineering Society (SESA) and their conference SETE2018.
We trust that there will be something of interest to everybody in the industry and look forward to seeing you at CORE2018 in Sydney on 30 April 2018.
