{"id":1856,"date":"2017-10-13T12:15:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T11:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/?p=1856"},"modified":"2025-01-07T14:43:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T13:43:25","slug":"formal-methods-railway-interlocking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/","title":{"rendered":"Formal methods for railway interlocking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the early days of railway history there were no interlocking systems. It was considered enough to have personnel at the train stations manually observing trains and operating signals. The need for automatic signalling eventually became evident: human beings tend to make mistakes, which can lead to serious accidents, and the capacity of railroads was reduced by all manual procedures.<\/p>\n<p>The drawback of automatic signalling were however obvious: huge investments were needed, and although automatic systems were not as error\u2013prone as manual processes, reliance on automatic systems led to potentially even more dangerous errors. Therefore, the construction of automatic signalling systems has to be extremely safety conscious.<\/p>\n<p>Today however, there are proof engines that can formally verify the safety requirements for a railway interlocking system in a few minutes using an average laptop computer. Time-consuming and incomplete safety testing can be replaced by mathematical proofs that, for a fraction of the previous cost, can provide 100 percent coverage. This approach requires good quality of the specifications. They must be formalized in a mathematically precise formal language, so that proof engines understand exactly what they are supposed to prove.<\/p>\n<p>In the article &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.railengineer.uk\/2017\/09\/12\/formal-methods-for-signalling-interlockings\/\"><strong>Formal Methods for signaling interlockings&#8217;<\/strong><\/a>, Pete Duggan, chief engineer at Siemens Rail Automation, writes about how Siemens in partnership with Prover Technology, have used Formal methods and \u2018Formal Proof of Program\u2019 in different infrastructures in order to reduced engineering effort and duration for system delivery.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railengineer.uk\/2017\/09\/12\/formal-methods-for-signalling-interlockings\/\"><strong>You can read the whole article here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early days of railway history there were no interlocking systems. It was considered enough to have personnel at  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[80,72,77,83],"class_list":["post-1856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formal-methods","tag-automation-solutions","tag-formal-methods","tag-interlocking-design-automation","tag-railway-industry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Formal methods for railway interlocking - Prover - Engineering a Safer World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Formal methods for railway interlocking - Prover - Engineering a Safer World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the early days of railway history there were no interlocking systems. It was considered enough to have personnel at [...]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Prover - Engineering a Safer World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-13T11:15:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-01-07T13:43:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anders Linden\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anders Linden\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Anders Linden\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/person\/8c9c39a0d3a9071571558e15bb704155\"},\"headline\":\"Formal methods for railway interlocking\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-10-13T11:15:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-01-07T13:43:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\"},\"wordCount\":248,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Automation Solutions\",\"Formal Methods\",\"Interlocking Design Automation\",\"Railway Industry\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Formal methods\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\",\"name\":\"Formal methods for railway interlocking - Prover - Engineering a Safer World\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-10-13T11:15:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-01-07T13:43:25+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp\",\"width\":700,\"height\":400},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Formal methods\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/categories\/formal-methods\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Formal methods for railway interlocking\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/\",\"name\":\"Prover - Engineering a Safer World\",\"description\":\"Interlocking Design Automation to meet demand for complex digital train control\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Prover - Engineering a Safer World\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/prover-logo.svg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/prover-logo.svg\",\"width\":222,\"height\":22,\"caption\":\"Prover - Engineering a Safer World\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"}},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/person\/8c9c39a0d3a9071571558e15bb704155\",\"name\":\"Anders Linden\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e40ec9a94d11f911222d65a99690f116648e5e9f8677d5492581f0ae0d3bb09?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e40ec9a94d11f911222d65a99690f116648e5e9f8677d5492581f0ae0d3bb09?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e40ec9a94d11f911222d65a99690f116648e5e9f8677d5492581f0ae0d3bb09?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Anders Linden\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/author\/anders-linden\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Formal methods for railway interlocking - Prover - Engineering a Safer World","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Formal methods for railway interlocking - Prover - Engineering a Safer World","og_description":"In the early days of railway history there were no interlocking systems. It was considered enough to have personnel at [...]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/","og_site_name":"Prover - Engineering a Safer World","article_published_time":"2017-10-13T11:15:50+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-01-07T13:43:25+00:00","og_image":[{"width":700,"height":400,"url":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Anders Linden","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Anders Linden","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/"},"author":{"name":"Anders Linden","@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/person\/8c9c39a0d3a9071571558e15bb704155"},"headline":"Formal methods for railway interlocking","datePublished":"2017-10-13T11:15:50+00:00","dateModified":"2025-01-07T13:43:25+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/"},"wordCount":248,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp","keywords":["Automation Solutions","Formal Methods","Interlocking Design Automation","Railway Industry"],"articleSection":["Formal methods"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/","url":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/","name":"Formal methods for railway interlocking - Prover - Engineering a Safer World","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp","datePublished":"2017-10-13T11:15:50+00:00","dateModified":"2025-01-07T13:43:25+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/signaling-interlocking-blog-jpg.webp","width":700,"height":400},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/formal-methods\/formal-methods-railway-interlocking\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Formal methods","item":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/categories\/formal-methods\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Formal methods for railway interlocking"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/prover.com\/","name":"Prover - Engineering a Safer World","description":"Interlocking Design Automation to meet demand for complex digital train control","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/prover.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#organization","name":"Prover - Engineering a Safer World","url":"https:\/\/prover.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/prover-logo.svg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/prover-logo.svg","width":222,"height":22,"caption":"Prover - Engineering a Safer World"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/prover.com\/#\/schema\/person\/8c9c39a0d3a9071571558e15bb704155","name":"Anders Linden","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e40ec9a94d11f911222d65a99690f116648e5e9f8677d5492581f0ae0d3bb09?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e40ec9a94d11f911222d65a99690f116648e5e9f8677d5492581f0ae0d3bb09?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e40ec9a94d11f911222d65a99690f116648e5e9f8677d5492581f0ae0d3bb09?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Anders Linden"},"url":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/author\/anders-linden\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20649,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856\/revisions\/20649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prover.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}