Infrabel, the administrator of the infrastructure of the Belgian railroad network, mentioned the Voxpilot VocaBase solution in its annual report.

You can find the report at Infrabel's web page (pag. 34).

Below you can find the case study of the solution provided.

Who

Infrabel is the administrator of the infrastructure of the Belgian railroad network. Infrabel coordinates the whole traffic and synchronizes the various train related information flows. This information is then broadcasted to travelers trough different tools (screens and voice announcements in station, posters, website…). This mission to inform travelers is one of the most important goals of Infrabel.

Why

At the beginning of 2009, Infrabel launches the web site www.railtime.be, which allows the travelers to inquire about the state of the traffic and to obtain real-time information on their train. Indeed, in case of abnormal situation - delay or incident on the network, the travelers need information (study led by the customer association of the Test-Achats). To better inform the travelers, Infrabel launches, in October 2010, a new communication channel: "RailTime by Phone" allowing the travelers to reach by phone real-time information also available on the RailTime site. To verify the schedule of a train or to know the last current disturbances on the network is now only a phone call away (national price without surcharge). A fast access to the information from any place as well as the ease of use (advanced speech recognition or use of the keyboard) are the main assets of the new information tool.

How

For this project, DB Scape acted, as a subcontractor of Fabricom-Suez in the role of global system integrator, Fabricom-Suez being already entitled by Infrabel to deploy all the travelers’ information tools in the Belgian train stations. The project was realized in partnership with the teams of Infrabel, of the end-user, and Syntigo as project coordinator. The hosting of the system in a redundant data center, and the system operation is done by ICTRA, a division of the B-holding company in charge of IT infrastructures. The Genesys GVP platform supports the OnMobile speech recognition and Acapela text-to-speech technologies, in both Dutch and in French.

The other component is the VocaBase application server which facilitated the easy configuration and the execution of the call flow according to Infrabel business rules. The Vocabase application server is permanently connected with the database that contains the real-time train schedules, and, thanks to the on-line simulator, application tests are facilitated. Through the automated generation of the statistical reports built on the call data, Infrabel is able to closely follow-up the platform utilization and evolution over time.



«RailTime by Phone works according two methods: the speech recognition or the use of the phone keyboard. According to the situation in which you are, you can thus choose to express your choices vocally or to encode them via the keyboard. The use of keys is deeply recommended when you are in a noisy environment. RailTime by Phone allows you to make a search by station, by train number or still to reach a summary of the current disturbances on the network. Please note that this application works essentially in real time; it supplies you the information known at the time of your call. To allow you to spare time during your next calls, RailTime by Phone also offers you the possibility of recording your favorite searches. »

Corine Athas, Infrabel spokesma