Design of Cloud Computing and Microservice-Based Urban Rail Transit Integrated Supervisory Control System Plus
Urban Rail Transit
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40864-020-00138-z
http://www.urt.cn/
ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPERS
Design of Cloud Computing and Microservice-Based Urban Rail
Transit Integrated Supervisory Control System Plus
Songwei Yu1
•
Haili Chang2 • Hanjun Wang1
Received: 10 September 2020 / Revised: 23 September 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020
Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In traditional metro weak current systems, subsystems built by different manufacturers are physically
separated, and devices are redundant while data are isolated. This causes low resource use, high maintenance cost,
long customization cycles, and high interface complexity.
In this paper, based on an analysis of the problems in traditional metro weak current systems, a novel cloud and
microservice-based urban rail transit integrated supervisory
control system (ISCS) named ISCS Plus is proposed. The
integration mode of each subsystem is determined by
analyzing safety requirements, real-time performance, and
business characteristics. An infrastructure platform is
designed to share resources and isolate applications based
on cloud computing technology, while traditional subsystems are decomposed as microservices and merged into
different applications. Finally, the entire architecture of
ISCS Plus is established and its features are discussed.
ISCS Plus plays a key role in the systematic, intelligent,
and automatic solution for metro weak current systems and
supports the development of the world’s leading metro
weak current systems.
Keywords Metro Urban rail transit Integrated
supervisory control system (ISCS) Cloud computing
Microservice Safety Realtime
& Songwei Yu
1
Beijing Urban Construction Design & Development Group
Co., Ltd, Beijing 100077, China
2
Beijing Urban Construction Intelligence & Control
Technology Co., Ltd, Beijing 100071, China
1 Introduction
An integrated supervisory control system (ISCS) is a largescale computer integrated system that integrates multiple
specialty subsystems of metro automation based on modern
computers, networks, automation, and information technology. It can be integrated on a unified platform to support
the monitoring, control, and management of power supervisory control and data acquisition systems (PSCADA),
building automation systems (BAS), automatic fire alarm
systems (FAS), automatic train supervision (ATS), closedcircuit television (CCTV), etc., to realize information
sharing and linkage control functions among various specialty subsystems [1]. International ISCS are mostly
expanded by a supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) system [2, 3], but a SCADA system is focused
more on the data acquisition and monitoring control of a
small number of specialty subsystems, and ISCS has
gradually integrated more specialties. ISCS involves many
specialty systems, and it is necessary to realize the cooperative operation among the specialties by monitoring each
specialty [4]. Therefore, ISCS is required to provide an
open architecture that can integrate and interconnect various specialties of metro automation systems, and can be
continuously developed and functionally expanded.
However, as each subsystem of the traditional metro
ISCS is provided by a different supplier with its own
complete software and hardware solution, and then integrated through a front-end processor (FEP), there are many
problems in the system integration scope, information
timeliness, follow-up expansion, and so on, which can no
longer meet the emerging new requirements (huge data
acquisition and real-time processing) in the development of
rail transit.
Communicated by Baoming Han.
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Urban Rail Transit
With the development and maturity of new technologies
such as cloud computing and microservices, there are better
solutions for multi-specialty, multi-system, multi-service
integration, and expansion. This paper analyzes the problems of traditional metro ISCS and proposes a new ISCS
Plus concept and architecture based on cloud computing
and microservice technology. To provide systematic,
intelligent, and automated solutions for the development of
metro weak current systems, the overall architecture of
ISCS Plus is designed by analyzing the integration modes
of different specialty subsystems, constructing a shared
resource pool in the cloud and isolating subsystem functions accordingly, and then decomposing the functional
modules of traditional specialties into microservices for
integration.
2 Literature Review
As the demand for urban rail transit grows, the scope and
quantity of data acquired and shared by various weak
current specialty systems in the metro ISCS is increasing
exponentially; however, the defects and deficiencies of
traditional technologies are also increasingly prominent,
and they need to be solved by technical improvement and
upgrading.
At present, countries all over the world have widely
adopted the informatization strategy to promote the
development of urban rail transit. Informatization has been
applied in construction, operation, management, safety,
service, and other aspects of metro systems. In 2020, the
China Association of Metros issued the Outline for the
Development of Smart Urban Rail in China’s Urban Rail
Transit, which proposed that ‘‘On the basis of independent
innovation, focusing on digitalization, intellectualization
and networking, the achievements of new technological
revolution are expected to be vigorously applied and deeply integrated with urban rail transit.’’ The strategy in the
outline points out that greater efforts will be made to
promote the application of new technologies such as cloud
computing and big data in the urban rail transportation
industry [5].
2.1 Traditional Metro ISCS
Traditional metro ISCS acquires and shares some information from weak current systems of various specialties
through integration and interconnection. Among these,
integrated subsystems are an automation system whose
functions are integrated by ISCS. The interconnected ISCS
has its own complete system structure, keeps the subsystems running independently, and interacts with the integrated monitoring system through the external interface to
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realize information exchange, sharing, and linkage control
functions. According to the specifications [6], the specialties that should be integrated include PSCADA, BAS,
FAS, CCTV, and platform screen doors (PSD). Specialty
systems that can be interconnected or integrated include
CCTV, passenger announcement (PA), passenger information systems (PIS), automatic fare collection systems
(AFC), access control systems (ACS), clock systems
(CLK), distributed temperature sensing systems (DTS),
electrical fire and emergency power supply (EPS), and
energy measurement and other systems [4], as shown in
Fig. 1.
As an automatic system, the metro ISCS has evolved
through several stages including discrete systems, multielectric integration systems, most or all weak current system integration and interconnection [ (...truncated)
