Modern railway for 21st Century

The conference Modern railway for 21st Century was held in Prague, in June 2, 2021. The Student Scientific Conference in 2021 is a continuation of the student scientific conferences held in previous years: Interoperability in Railway Transport – IRICoN 2016, Modernization on the Railway – IRICoN 2017 and High-Speed Lines – the Future of the Czech Railway – IRICoN 2020.This year’s conference "Modern railway for 21st Century" is focused on modern technologies implemented in railways in the 21st century. The railway has its place in the 21st century. According to a recent study by the International Union of Railways, the rail transport has about four times less external costs per passengerkilometer than road or air transport. In freight transport, it is even six times less. Meanwhile, more than half of the external costs of road transport come from accidents. For aircraft, the vast majority of externalities are related to exhaust emissions and their impact on climate change.An important area of modern railways in the 21st century is digitization, which is the main content of the Intelligent Transport Systems on Railways (ITS-R) project and the technological development of ITS-R in the Railways 4.0 project. An important change in today’s railways should be the overall digitization, which is not only focused on the area of control, command and signaling, but also on passenger-related areas (internet access, etc.), information and check-in technologies, logistics and dispatcher applications. This involves, above all, the fundamental and systematic coverage of the entire railway by mobile network and to equip all vehicles by new digital technologies. This opens up great opportunities for the railway in the future. However, with the massive shift towards a fully digital railway, new problems have to be solved, such as cyber security or the economic sustainability and efficiency of the railway. Therefore, the topic of ITS-R and Rail 4.0 was one of the main conference sessions.Of course, the modern railway also affects other parts of railway operations. If we want to operate a really high-quality and reliable railway transport, it is necessary to take care on periodic maintenance of vehicles and especially infrastructure. Freight transport is a major problem; most vehicles are at the end of their lifetime and digitalization of them seems to be difficult and economically disadvantageous. In addition to maintenance, the operation, purchase or lease of vehicles could also be discussed. In addition to electrification, the energy sector is indirectly affected by the backup of independent vehicles to ensure service availability in the event of a power failure.The professional level of the conference was guaranteed by presentations of leading experts in railway transport from universities and from companies and institutions in railway transport (e.g. SŽ, ČD, VUŽ, VUKV). The main part of the participants were students of master and doctoral study programmes from the Czech Technical University in Prague, Brno University of Technology, University of Pardubice, VŠB-TU Ostrava and University of West Bohemia.The Student Scientific Conference in 2021 was held under the auspices of the Dean of the Faculty of Transportation Sciences, doc. Ing. Pavel Hrubeš, Ph.D. Scientific committee:Josef Jíra (CTU in Prague – Faculty of Transportation Sciences)Tomáš Brandejský (CTU in Prague – Faculty of Transportation Sciences)Antonín Blažek (Enteria a.s.)Martin Jacura (CTU in Prague – Faculty of Transportation Sciences)Aleš Hába (UPCE – Faculty of Transport Engineering)Zdeněk Kaufmann (Czech Technology Platform – Interoperability of Railway Infrastructure)Martin Král (SŽ, s.o.)Martin Leso (CTU in Prague – Faculty of Transportation Sciences)Petr Nachtigall (UPCE – Jan Perner Transport Faculty)Otto Plášek (BUT – Faculty of Civil Engineering)Jindřich Sadil (CTU in Prague – Faculty of Transportation Sciences)Richard Svoboda (BUT – Faculty of Civil Engineering)Lukáš Týfa (CTU in Prague – Faculty of Transportation Sciences)Jaroslav Vašátko (VUZ, a.s.)Jakub Vágner (UPCE – Faculty of Transport Engineering) Local organizing committee:Vít FáberaJitka JírováDušan KamenickýPetr KouteckýJitka Řezníčková st.Jitka ŘezníčkováJan ŘezníčekLukáš SvobodaJan Zelenka Guarantor of the peer review process:prof. Ing. Josef Jíra, CSc.