Honorary Professor John Easton MEng, PhD, MCMI, MIET, MIEEE

Department of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering
Lecturer

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 4315
Email: j.m.easton@bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr John Easton is a Lecturer working with the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education at the University of Birmingham. His research interests centre on methods for the storage, processing and display of railway related datasets – in particular data representation and exchange via ontologies, manipulation and integration of data relevant to the multimodal transport system, and cyber security in industrial control systems.

Qualifications

PhD in “Optimised analysis and visualisation of metabolic data using graph theoretical approaches”, University of Birmingham (2009)
MEng (Hons) in Computer Systems Engineering with Management, University of Birmingham (2004)
Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET)
Member of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI)

Biography

Initially working in the field of Metabolomics, where he developed data models for the exchange and analysis of NMR data, John moved to the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education in 2009. Since then he’s worked on a range of data driven projects in rail, and currently leads the research activity on data integration, management and cyber security for the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network’s (UKRRIN) Centre of Excellence in Digital Systems. John is actively involved in hosting conferences in the area of transportation data, acting as the programme chair of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) International Conference on Railway Engineering’s European events, and chairing an annual workshop at the IEEE’s Big Data conferences in the USA.

Alongside his academic duties, John sits on the GB rail industry’s Data and Information Systems Interface Committee (DISIC), is the immediate past chair of the IET's Railway Technical Network having previously chaired the group between 2018 and 2021, and has been a visiting Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute in 2022/23.

Postgraduate supervision

John Easton's research interests centre on methods for the storage, processing and display of railway related datasets - in particular data representation and exchange via ontologies, manipulation and integration of data relevant to the multimodal transport system, and cyber security in industrial control systems.

Research

Methods for the storage, processing and display of railway related datasets; in particular data representation and exchange via ontologies, manipulation and integration of data relevant to the multimodal transport system, and cyber security in industrial control systems.

Other activities

Member of the IET Railway Technical and Professional Network (TPN) Executive Team – January 2015 to present.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Fu, Q, Easton, J & Burrow, M 2024, 'Development of an Integrated Computing Platform for Measuring, Predicting, and Analyzing the Profile-Specific Fixity of Railway Tracks', Transportation Research Record, vol. 2678, no. 6, pp. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981231191521

Preece, J, Morris, C & Easton, J 2024, 'Leveraging Ontochains for Distributed Public Transit Ticketing: An Investigation with the System for Ticketing Ubiquity with Blockchains', IET Blockchain, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 456-469. https://doi.org/10.1049/blc2.12071

Preece, J & Easton, J 2024, 'To blockchain or not to blockchain, these are the questions: A structured analysis of blockchain decision schemes', Telematics and Informatics Reports, vol. 13, 100115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teler.2024.100115

Preece, J, Dean, I & Easton, J 2023, 'An Analysis of Track Geometry Data in Combination with Supporting Exogenous Sources Using Linear Regression Techniques', Transportation Research Procedia, vol. 72, pp. 1201-1207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2023.11.578

Alzahrani, R, Herko, S & Easton, J 2021, 'Blockchain-hosted data access agreements for remote condition monitoring in rail', Journal of the British Blockchain Association, vol. 4, no. 2, 3. https://doi.org/10.31585/jbba-4-2-(3)2021

Ikpobe, O & Easton, J 2021, 'Can blockchain take smartphones out of contact tracing?', Journal of the British Blockchain Association, vol. 5, no. 1, 30993. https://doi.org/10.31585/jbba-5-1-(1)2022

Conference contribution

Ni, H, Easton, J, Fu, Q, Zhao, N & Arvanitis, T 2025, Explaining Decision-Making in Railway Route Decision Using SHAP And Machine Learning. in World Congress on Railway Research (WCRR) 2025, Colorado Springs, CO, USA. SPARK, World Congress on Railway Research 2025, Colorado Springs, CO, USA, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, 17/11/25.

Easton, J 2023, Digitalization and the Transport Industry: Are we Ready? in 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE International Conference on Big Data, IEEE, pp. 3814-3820, 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Osaka, Japan, 17/12/22. https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData55660.2022.10020210

Ni, H, Fu, Q, Xu, X, Yi, Q & Easton, J 2023, OPTIMIZING RAILWAY SIGNALLING CONTROL THROUGH MULTI-AGENT REINFORCEMENT LEARNING FOR REAL TIME TRAIN ROUTE SETTING. in Institution of Railway Signal Engineering (IRSE) ASPECT 2023 Conference. Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE) ASPECT 2023 International
Conference, Melbourn, Victoria, Australia, 21/11/23.

Preece, J & Easton, J 2023, Sharing is caring: redefining the smart ticket to facilitate technical innovation within smart ticketing infrastructures. in World Congress on Railway Research. World Congress on Railway Research 2022, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 6/06/22.

Preece, J, Morris, C & Easton, J 2023, Towards STUB 2.0: Using Graph-Based World States in Hyperledger Besu to Facilitate Distributed Transport Ticketing. in 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE International Conference on Big Data, IEEE, pp. 3838-3844, 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), Osaka, Japan, 17/12/22. https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData55660.2022.10020309

Preece, J, Samra, M, Thomas, RJ & Easton, J 2022, A video game-inspired approach for a pedestrian guidance system within a railway station. in Y Chen, H Ludwig, Y Tu, U Fayyad, X Zhu, X Hu, S Byna, X Liu, J Zhang, S Pan, V Papalexakis, J Wang, A Cuzzocrea & C Ordonez (eds), 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data)., 9671420, IEEE International Conference on Big Data, IEEE, pp. 2919-2924, 2021 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), 15/12/21. https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData52589.2021.9671420

Alzahrani, R, Herko, S & Easton, J 2021, Blockchain application in remote condition monitoring. in X Wu, C Jermaine, L Xiong, XT Hu, O Kotevska, S Lu, W Xu, S Aluru, C Zhai, E Al-Masri, Z Chen & J Saltz (eds), 2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data)., 9377895, IEEE International Conference on Big Data, pp. 2385-2394, 2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), 10/12/20. https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData50022.2020.9377895

Paper

Thomas, RJ, Easton, J, Preece, J, Samra, M & Nonyelu, F 2022, 'Developing a 5G-enabled crowd management and passenger navigation solution for post-COVID-19 multi-modal travel', Paper presented at World Congress on Railway Research 2022, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 6/06/22 - 10/06/22.

Review article

Fu, Q, Nicholson, G & Easton, J 2024, 'Understanding data quality in a data-driven industry context: Insights from the fundamentals', Journal of Industrial Information Integration, vol. 42, 100729. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2024.100729

View all publications in research portal