Digital design of a railway traffic control system: purpose and scope of digitization

The article presents the issue of digitization of the design of railway traffic control systems. Digital design is a key element of digital modeling of railway infrastructure and the future in terms of documenting railway traffic control systems at all stages of its life cycle: concept, design, installation, testing and operation. The digital project is one of the pillars of the concept of the digital twin of the railway system. The need to digitize design results from technological and organizational changes taking place in the railway system. The goal of these changes is to replace traditional methods and techniques for creating a design with modern methods such as BIM. In this sense, the project cannot be further identified with the documentation, but it is a much broader concept that includes a set of data describing the railway traffic control system. The project includes both the mapping of the system - the model, as well as a description of how to implement this model. In order to achieve the main goal of digitization, this process should be carried out in many ways, so that it simultaneously covers the following aspects: (1) design (model), i.e. the subject of design, (2) design system, (3) design process, (4) system environment design system, (5) information exchange between the design system and the environment. The concept of digitization presented in the article requires the full involvement of design offices, infrastructure managers, scientific and research units and due to the extent of the issue it will be a long-term process, but due to the anticipated benefits - inevitable.