Takeaways from the Signaling Design Automation Forum 2021

November 16 Prover hosted Signaling Design Automation Forum 2021 in Paris.

The Signaling Design Automation Forum is an event gathering signaling professionals from the railway industry to share and discuss the latest evolutions on design automation – software technologies to automate design and verification of railway signaling systems.

It is a forum for sharing experiences and best practices as well as for networking. We are happy and honored by the interest and the engagement shown during the conference. The conference was fully booked and the day was filled with a multitude of engaged discussions.

What happened during SDAF 2021?

This is the third SDAF conference and it was inspiring to see the strong increase in adoption of Formal Methods and Signaling Design Automation to automate and digitize the development of railway signaling systems. At Prover we are convinced about the benefits of a process with formalized specifications enabling automated development and automated formal verification of safety. It gives the end customers control of their systems, cut time and costs significantly and ensures safety with 100% coverage.

During the day several interesting presentations were held and at the end of the day we carried out an on-line survey on key issues covering formal verification and design automation.

• We learned about how CASCO is using Formal Verification and now taking next steps to formal development, gaining a competitive edge with ensured safety and shorter deployment times.
• RATP a pioneer in the use of Formal Verification to ensure safety presented their way of working and their ambitious next steps towards a system oriented process.
• Alstom presented their work and commitment to work with Formal Verification as well as their plans to expand the use of Formal Verification covering more and more systems.
• The metro´s of Stockholm and Copenhagen gave insights into the benefits of formalizing specifications via a Digital Twin to give them control over the system reducing vendor dependencies and enabling efficient testing, verification and simulation of the systems.

We ended the day with an online survey covering key topics within SDA and Formal Verification.

It was a day full of discussions and a positive outlook for the future. The railway industry has an important role to play for us all to meet the climate goals ahead. This is reflected in the increased investments around the world in new rail capacity. Being part of developing this industry to shorten time for new railway capacity and ensuring safety, feels important and rewarding!

We at Prover are very grateful to all attendees and speakers for joining us and making this day a truly inspiring and rewarding day!