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The 58th IEC/TC9 Plenary Meeting Held in Tokyo
November 27, 2018
Railway Technical Research Institute
The 58th Plenary Meeting of the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission)/TC9 (Electrical Equipment and systems for railways) (IEC/TC9) took place from November 19 to 22 this year at the Station Conference Manseibashi in Tokyo. The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has served as the Japanese national mirror committee for IEC/TC9 and organized the Plenary Meeting in Japan as a host country committee.
51 people participated in the meeting from 13 countries, Australia, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany , Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
At the meeting, committee chairperson Mr. Gianosvaldo Piana Fadin expressed gratitude to the host country Japan and called the meeting to order.
Following Mr. Fadin’s remarks, Dr. Norimichi Kumagai, president of RTRI, gave welcome remarks.
At the plenary meeting, the conclusions attained through the standardizing activities in the year and the progresses of projects are to be confirmed, and decisions are made to start the review of new standards and to set up the review system.
At this year’s meeting, the progress of reviews was reported and discussions were made on starting new projects. Finally 40 resolutions were made including the decisions to start vote for the proposal by Japan, standardizing “AC power compensator”, and to set up a new group led by Japan to standardize “lithium-Ion battery for auxiliary circuit.”
As you may see, decisions were made to start the review process of new standards where Japan will take the lead. In addition, since many of Japanese experts participated in the meeting and directly explained the review activities in Japan, they were able to appeal the role of Japan in international standardization to the participants from the increasing number of countries. RTRI will use the results of this meeting in order to deepen understanding of Japanese railways and to help Japanese railway technologies advance into overseas markets. During the meeting period, a technical tour to the test facilities at RTRI was organized so that the participants from foreign countries can understand Japanese railway technologies.
[Greetings by President Kumagai]
I would like to thank you for participating this plenary meeting held here in Japan, and I want to extend my warmest welcome to you all. All of us at RTRI hope to produce significant results through the review process of international railway standards and to contribute to creating better railway systems in the world. Although technical development and standardization efforts seem two different matters, the goal of both activities, providing the results of serious efforts by researchers and engineers to the society, is based upon the same principle. I am expecting thorough discussion at this meeting that will help building a better world.
* You can see all the photos and figures in the PDF file above.