Prototyping freight trains traffic management using multi-agent systems

Applications dealing with railway traffic management have been usually modeled adopting classical technologies such as Operations Research and Constraint Programming. These technologies are suitable to model static situations where the information is complete, but they lack to cope with the dynamics and uncertainty of freight trains traffic management. The paper presents a new approach to the problem based on the Multi-Agent System technology CaseLP, a logic programming based environment for MAS prototyping, has been adopted to face a real case-study: the management of freight trains traffic along the railway line between the Italian stations of Milano and La Spezia. The research, conducted within the framework of the EuROPE-TRIS Project, has successfully demonstrated the advantages of the MAS approach to this field of application.