In the last meeting of the IT Study Group of the UIC Freight Forum on 13th October 2009 in Paris the group decided to bring the industrial standards of the Open Telematics Alliance called open telematics interfaces (opti) to an official layer.

Therefore the IT Study Group had established a project called SITA (Standardized Interface for Telematic Application) to take over the open telematics interfaces (opti) created and developed by the Open Telematics Alliance (OPTA) into an UIC Leaflet.

This UIC Leaflet will provide a technical specification for a standardized interface and defines the mechanism for the information exchange over a Cellular Network (CN) between Mobile Unit (MU) and Communication Server (CS) for railway freight wagon telematics applications. The exchanged information defines the behaviour of MU and/or informs the CS about status and events of the MU. The UIC Leaflet will specify the structure of the information that has to be exchanged and the dependant architecture.

The dissemination of this leaflet is planned for the 4th quarter of 2010.

Mr. Rainer Wilke,
President IT Study Group of the UIC Freight Forum

Who is the UIC?

The UIC or International Union of Railways (French: Union Internationale des Chemins de fer) is an international rail transport industry body based in Paris (France). The UIC's mission is to promote rail transport at world level and meet the challenges of mobility and sustainable development.

What is a UIC Leaflet?

Within the context of its primary mission of "standardisation and improvement of location and operating conditions of railways with a view to international traffic", the UIC has developed common measures, specifications and recommendations aimed at facilitating international rail traffic.

The UIC Leaflets are professional documents, the application of which is either obligatory or recommended. They are the result of international cooperation between experts of the member railway networks of the UIC, more often than not in collaboration with other experts in the industry, standardisation organisms, etc. Their content makes them of global value and they are a reference for the entire railway community. They aim at unifying or standardising the construction measures as well as the railway operating procedures with a view to facilitating international traffic. They also allow members to rationalise their operations and to lower their costs.

The UIC Leaflets are applied, according to their content, by railway undertakings, infrastructure managers, industry, public works undertakings, etc. The measures they contain are often integrated in national norms, European norms, global invitations to tender for railway equipment.

They therefore contain the technical requirements which must be respected to facilitate the exchange of equipment between the networks, as well as cross-border transport.

• The UIC Leaflets are not norms, since the measures that the UIC decrees are only obligatory for its members.  
• The UIC Leaflets are not law as they are decreed by those railway undertakings which are members of the UIC and not by national legislative bodies.
• The UIC Leaflets coexist with the national and international laws. In this context, it should be noted that they often act as a reference and technical basis for drafting the norms and regulations decreed by authorised organisms in Europe (CEN, AEIF, etc.)