Development of Train Operation Control Method Using Doppler Radars to Detect Wind Gusts 

To keep our railway lines safer in the event of wind gusts such as tornadoes, we conducted joint research with the Meteorological Research Institute to develop a method for detecting wind gusts using a Doppler radar. The Doppler radar detects and tracks vortices and services are suspended in areas of the tracks that are in the predicted path of a vortex. The system was introduced within a 30km radius of the radar (between Iragawa and Mega on the Uetsu Main Line and between Kiyokawa and Amarume on the Rikuusai Line) in December 2017, making it the first system in the world to use a Doppler radar to detect wind gusts for the purpose of adjusting train services. The system was expanded in November 2019 to cover a 60km radius of the radar (between Imagawa and Nishime on the Uetsu Main Line and between Kiyokawa and Amarume on the Rikuusai Line). Further research and development of this method is being carried out to improve accuracy and expand the implementation area of our method for controlling train operations by detecting wind gusts.