ROCC and Role: Implementation of operational control centres for resilience

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties and situations that don’t go to plan. Railways are a complex and complicated business. Customers demand improved performance and value-for-money whilst rail operators strive for business excellence but often struggle for fiscal prudency.Running a railway to plan without incident or interruption, achieving customer satisfaction and business success are the major goals for rail operators. An effective Rail Operations Control Centre (ROCC) is the ‘heart and mind’ of rail operations that can meet those goals.This paper examines the role of the ROCC to achieve resiliency of the railway. Resiliency is considered two-fold:- Firstly, the ability of ROCC to contribute to the overarching resiliency of rail operations based on a set of implementation criteria.
Secondly, the ROCC itself being resilient to perform its function under changing circumstances.Railway operations is the task to provide a safe, efficient, available, punctual, and effective transportation service to customers. Railway operations involves planning & scheduling (long and short term); day of operations delivery (including live run to schedule and perturbation management); incident and emergency response; and supporting functions (such as administrative, financial, procurement, human resource and asset management).The ROCC is a facility of people, processes and technology to deliver the operations plan. It is usually the pivotal point and primary command and control hub to manage operations in a modern railway. The ROCC provides supervisory, monitoring, dispatching, control, and operational safety management. It is usually concentrated in a few locations, often in a dedicated building and usually contains a main control
room for day-of-operations control purposes. It is often a showpiece for the railway operator.To achieve a resilient railway operation, an effective ROCC where the people, processes and technology are brought together in a combined, cohesive, and coordinated manner can improve delivery and optimise the operations plan. The steps to implement a successful ROCC include stating the key benefits of the ROCC; establishing the key
functions of the ROCC with respect the railway operation tasks; determining the ROCC key implementation criteria (i.e. time horizon, hierarchy of control, geographical and asset coverage, systems functional span, degree of centralization, and degree of integration with other systems); and determining staff roles and responsibilities and resultant operating modes. Whilst the ROCC
can support a resilient railway operation, the ROCC itself must be resilient to provide its function, to be available to provide an accepted level of operational normalcy and to  cope with threats and vulnerabilities. In this regard, the design of the ROCC is as important as the operational service it provides. Considering resilient control systems requirements, the design of a ROCC should consider the reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety of the rail systems deployed in the ROCC; the control room
layout and arrangements including human factors; threat and vulnerability assessment including identifying the need for redundancy and back-up facilities; security; access; EMC; noise and vibration and future expansion requirements.Considering the above resiliency criteria can allow rail operations to ROCC and role.