A Metamodeling Technique for Managing Intermodal Transportation Networks

The paper specifies an Integrated System (IS) devoted to efficient management and control of Intermodal Transportation Networks (ITN). The IS is designed to take both tactical decisions, in an off-line mode, and operational decisions, in real time. Both the resulting IS structures rely on a closed loop approach tuning decisions with the current system conditions. In either case, the IS core is a reference model using information from the real system, obtained by modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools, for ITN efficient planning and management purposes. To obtain a systematic model suitable to describing generic ITN, the reference model relies on a metamodeling approach that allows the thorough and detailed description of the ITN structure and behavior. The proposed metamodeling procedure is a top-down approach based on the Unified Modeling Language, a graphic and textual formalism for representing systems structure and behavior.