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Apr 13 · 2 min read
Following is a summary of the Flatland challenge 2019, which was organized by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) from Jul ’19 to Jan ’20.
Challenge Summary
Facing a need to increase the transportation capacity of their railways network by approximately 30% to meet future demands of passenger as well as goods transportation, the research group at SBB has developed a high-performance simulator1 which simulates the dynamics of train traffic as well as the railway infrastructure, in order to study different approaches for automated traffic management systems (TMS) with a goal to optimize traffic flow across the network.2
At the core of this challenge lies the general vehicle re-scheduling problem (VRSP) which SBB aims to address by providing a simplistic grid world environment and allowing for diverse solution approaches3. SBB is looking at experts in Machine Learning or even more traditional Operations Research for ideas that may shape the way modern traffic management systems (TMS) are implemented4 not only in railway but also in other areas of transportation and logistics.5
Prizes Offered
If the challenge itself wasn’t exciting enough, surely the prizes announced by SBB, with a total value of 30k CHF (approx. 30k USD), were just the sort of motivation one needed.
Cash prizes awarded to the top three submissions were as follows:
- CHF 7’500 for 1st prize
- CHF 5’000 for 2nd prize
- CHF 2’500 for 3rd prize
Winning Strategies
Very important was to solve rescheduling. It was the hardest challenge in this problem. After malfunction all your plans are broken. So we made scheduling using a variant of train passing order for every cell. Already with this solution we were in 2nd place and we remained in 2nd place. In fact, on the last day, we even designed and implemented partial rescheduling. Although it added some points but not enough for 1st place.
In words of team CkUa, who ended up in 2nd place with best score of 0.96:
Venenatis a condimentum vitae sapien pellentesque habitant morbi tristique. Nisi quis eleifend quam adipiscing vitae proin sagittis nisl rhoncus.
— CkUa
With respect to the submission process, while some participants might have found the docker based method difficult to grasp at first, there were many who were very appreciative of the process.
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