Cover Image Credit: DB / SZ
About the project
Jaud IT was part of the research team for a scientific-technical georeferencing study for the new Dresden–Prague railway line, contributing to the IFC and MVD component: the schemas and formats used in openBIM information exchange.
The study was led by HTW Dresden's Faculty of Geoinformation (Prof. Christian Clemen) and addressed a real planning problem: the new line includes a cross-border tunnel roughly 30 kilometers through the Ore Mountains, between Heidenau in Germany and Chabařovice in the Czech Republic. Planning a structure like this in 3D means one needs a coordinate reference that actually works across two national boundaries — a specialty not occuring often occurring in projects.
Image Credit: DB InfraGO AG / Jan Frintert, link
Two problems had to be solved. The first is geometric: cartographic projections always introduce scale distortions, and they get worse with elevation. The study calculated optimal parameters for a low-distortion projection suited to the tunnel's geometry. The second is institutional: Deutsche Bahn and Czech Railways use different coordinate system types and different realizations of the ETRS89 datum. Drawing on geodetic calculations by TU Dresden (Prof. Lambert Wanninger) and survey measurements from engineering firm Dr. Franke, HTW Dresden built open-source transformation software that converts survey points, geodata, and alignment elements between the two railway surveying systems.
The study also produced software guidance and information management recommendations so openBIM projects can handle geodetic coordinate scales consistently — a known pain point where different teams tend to patch around the problem in different ways.
The study ran from March 2024 to September 2025 at HTW Dresden's Center for Applied Research and Technology (ZAFT), in close collaboration with Schüßler-Plan Ingenieurgesellschaft, DB InfraGO, TU Dresden, and Jaud IT GmbH. Results were presented on 16 September 2025 at the DB Information Center in Heidenau.
Read more on the Dresden-Prague project's official page