System

Set of interacting entities, conceptually aggregable in a railway context, whose operation pursues certain objectives with efficiency and safety criteria; entities can be human, material and immaterial, and can involve the exchange of flows of a similar nature (men, material goods, energy, information). The decomposition of a system in the component parts can conventionally be reduced to the level of: subsystem, apparatus, component, module and element. In a more abstract way, the concept of system includes the life of a set of socio-technical structures, which cooperate to achieve a goal, organizing themselves into other sub-systems, functionally dedicated and interacting with an external environment. In a more restrictive way, the term system refers to a technical or instrumental entity; also synonymous with plant or equipment, of which a certain complexity is recognized