About - IRIS

An innovative way to increase efficiency by providing and integrating real-time data as well as real-time 2-way communication for railway staff.

Who are we?

Developed in partnerships with Liverpool John Moores University, Merseyrail, Innovate UK, The Department for Transport and UKRI.

What IRIS does?

IRIS integrates with railway industry systems (Darwin, TRUST, TD, Tyrell, NRE, staff emails and more) to improve communication between railway staff, IRIS is fully supported and fully customisable to meet operator’s needs.

What is IRIS?

This is a new kind of information system for frontline station staff called “IRIS: information system for railway station staff” to enhance communication and their experience in stations.

Particularly, IRIS digital display equips staff with a 2-way communication mechanism, as well as integrating richer, faster, and more accurate information from different sources into one single view, including real-time passenger counts from platforms which will be reported in the system.

As a result, staff can focus more on speaking to the passengers, rather than spending time reporting and reconciling information from different sources via different means such as telephone, radio’s, colleagues, internet, and several mobile app.
IRIS customer-centric display will also help staff to speak in passengers’ language and improve ease of understanding for passengers.

The simplified way of automatically reconciling all additional information such as number of passengers, real-time position of trains, list of all stops, expected arrival time etc. of all relevant journeys will allow staff to help passengers in making travel decisions/planning more effectively.

The presence of IRIS portable device or digital display will create an impression of ownership and authority to passengers, allowing them to trust staff’s ability to be helpful.

Staff can also share the view on IRIS display with passengers to improve understanding further.

The Team

Development Team

Project Lead – Professor Thanh Nguyen

Project Manager – Alan Palin

UX/UI Design – Adam Withington

Back End Developer – Tony Morris

Front End Developer – Rinchen Tuladhar

Sound Engineer – Jamie Kolonic

Video Engineer – Carolyn Froment

Co-investigators – Neil Cook / Ahmed Makki / Igor Deplano

LJMU Support Team

Mark Fealey

Diane Fitch