As NEXUS approaches the end of its two-year journey, the project has consolidated three flagship innovations — its Key Exploitable Results (KERs) — designed to shape the future of metro operations for operators, transport authorities, technology providers and the wider rail sector. Their refinement was supported by the Horizon Results Booster Go-to-Market support.
These three results were selected through close collaboration across the whole NEXUS consortium, its wide network of stakeholders, and refined with expert support from the EU’s Horizon Results Booster programme.
1. AI Handbook for Metro Operators
With development led by TU Wien, the NEXUS AI Handbook is designed to take the guesswork out of AI adoption for metro operators. Rather than a generic AI primer, it offers practical, metro-specific guidance — helping operators identify the right AI use cases, from predictive maintenance to passenger flow management, while navigating safety, cybersecurity and regulatory requirements like the EU AI Act. Built on real operator needs identified within NEXUS, the handbook is designed to grow into training modules and hands-on advisory support, giving operators the confidence to move from AI curiosity to AI in action.
Based on NEXUS D3.1 – User and Operator Requirements, it will include a curated catalogue of relevant AI use cases (predictive maintenance, passenger flow management, demand prediction and more), a step-by-step implementation roadmap, practical decision-making tools and case studies, guidance on organisational change and workforce upskilling, and data governance/compliance guidance aligned with GDPR and the EU AI Act, suppoorting metro operators in making informed, strategic decisions about AI adoption across all automation levels, from GoA1 to GoA4.
The handbook’s structure and content are now defined, and the next step is to validate it directly with metro operators. Once finalised, it might grow into training modules and hands-on advisory support, giving operators the confidence to move from AI curiosity to AI in action.
2. Decision Support and Simulation Platform for Metro Operations
NEXUS’s second key result gives operators a digital twin of their own network — a safe space to test changes before making them in real life. With development led by STAM through its MOBIUS prototype, the platform lets operators ask “what if?” and get a real answer: what happens if you run fewer trains, or reroute during disruption? The platform simulates it — and then goes a step further, automatically searching for the best possible solution for a given set of goals.
The prototype has already been put to the test on two real metro networks. Applied to AMT’s network in Genoa, it showed that fleet size could be cut by up to 22% with barely any impact on passengers. In Sofia, it revealed hidden effects specific to individual metro lines that a network-wide view would have missed entirely. And across the board, smarter configurations pointed to lower energy use and emissions — in some cases by more than 20%.
Looking ahead, the platform is built to keep evolving — with the door open for even smarter, AI-powered capabilities down the line, as it moves from validated prototype towards a fully deployable tool for operators.
3. Automation Architecture for Driverless Metro Systems
The third NEXUS result, with development led by Siemens Mobility, looks further into the future: a next-generation architecture for fully driverless metro systems. Built around openness and modularity, it’s designed so that tomorrow’s metro systems can be upgraded piece by piece — swapping in new technology as it emerges — rather than being locked into rigid, one-size-fits-all designs.
The architecture is designed to support real-time data exchange across a metro system’s core subsystems — signalling, rolling stock, platform systems, train control and monitoring, and operational control centres — while making room for emerging technologies such as 5G, edge and cloud computing. By defining clearer interfaces between these components, it aims to let operators upgrade or replace individual parts of their automation systems over time, rather than facing a costly, all-or-nothing overhaul.
The influence of this architecture is already tangible: Siemens Mobility is incorporating the architectural principles developed within NEXUS into its own industrial roadmap, with the ideas set to be tested and refined as new driverless metro systems are designed and delivered in the years ahead.
A differentiated approach to exploitation
As the NEXUS exploitation plan makes clear, these three results sit at different levels of maturity and follow different pathways to uptake: from short-term guidance and training (KER1), to medium-term validation and piloting (KER2), to a longer-term industrial and research trajectory (KER3). Together, they reflect the diversity of the NEXUS consortium — spanning academic research, technology development, operational expertise and sector outreach — and lay the groundwork for how the project’s innovations can continue to support the future of AI-enabled, automated and data-driven metro operations beyond the project’s lifetime.
The full exploitation plan, including the methodology behind the KER selection process and reflections on possible follow-up activities, is available in Deliverable D10.3 – Exploitation Plan and Road Mapping (By NEXUS partner TiS) in the project’s Repository.