MARS - Mobile App for Rail freight Services

UIC-RailData and Xrail signed agreement for co-development of the "Mobile application for railfreight services" (MARS).

Objective of MARS is to ultimately replace RailData’s WDI tool (Web Data Interface) as a user-friendly application to ensure the communication flow between small cooperation partners operating in the first mile, last mile and transit on behalf of a lead Railway Undertaking (RU).

This initiative is inspired by the future Rail Freight Forward Digital Platform project (RFF DP). MARS project will be driving synergies in the RU ecosystem and also demonstrate collaboration between RailData and XRail

 The MARS software application will consists of:

• FrontEnd, web and mobile applications acting as Presentation layer. Evolit was chosen as supplier of the FrontEnd. 
• BackEnd, which contains a Business layer and an Adaptor layer. Both Layers will be implemented by Lusis, IT provider to RailData. 

 The Adaptor layer, which connects to existing services at RailData (e.g. Orfeus and ISR) is also foresee to enable more open future use of the other RailData services.

In addition, the existing RD Orfeus and ISR applications must be enhanced for MARS.

MARS is to be used to receive and send current sector messages (ECN, WSM, Hermes,etc.) to other partners and enable digital communication

Manual capturing will be avoided as good as possible by pre configuring objects e.g. using Orfeus and GCU Broker.

Extra Ordinary General assembly of RailData has committed to co-develop MARS, together with Xrail. Architects work on development of MARS the application already.