Tågtrafikledare i praktiken
Informationshantering och systemanvändning vid Gävle driftledningscentral
In Sweden whenever trains or maintenance workers want access to the railway system, their requests of usage and movements are being supervised, granted and handled by train dispatchers. The profession holds a key role in making the complex railway system work in terms of efficiency, safety and delivering on-time arrivals. This master thesis, delegated by the Swedish Transport Administration, has been carried out at the Division of Human Computer Interaction at Uppsala University and at the train traffic control center in Gävle. The aim has been to map what information the train dispatchers use in order to make safety-related decisions concerning their working goals. And further to describe and analyze how the train dispatchers, visavi their tools and systems in the work domain, gather necessary information.The result indicates a complex, diverse and spread out setting of different programs, procedures and tools that make satisfactory fulfilment of efficiency, safety and punctuality in relation to the time table hard. This is especially the case at times of high work load, when the information gathering process becomes more complicated and time consuming, during which the planning ability is reduced. The result also points to some inadequacies and problems in the work domain. We recommend more integrated dynamic solutions concerning the planning and control tools where more of the decision based information can be embedded. This will be even more important as long as traffic increases, demands on efficiency, safety and punctuality tighten and more actors enter the market.