UIC – International Union of Railways

International Union of Railways (UIC) is the worldwide professional association representing the railway sector and promoting rail transport. UIC leads an innovative and dynamic sector, helping members find continuing success and opportunities. The UIC strives to optimally meeting current and future challenges of mobility and sustainable development, propose new ways to improve technical and environmental performance of railways, improve competitiveness and develop and facilitate all forms of international cooperation among members and sharing of best practices.

UIC Members agreed to structure UIC’s work around three core “values”:

• Unity UIC is the professional and technical association representing the unity of the railway
• Solidarity UIC represents Members with different features and levels of development
• Universality UIC’s scope of activities is global and embraces the universality of railway topics

The international conference founding UIC was held in Paris on 17 October 1922. Initially the UIC had 51 members from 29 countries including Japan and China, which were soon joined by the railways from the USSR, the Middle East and North Africa. Nowadays the UIC has 205 members in 100 countries, managed in total around 1 million kilometres of railways, and around 7 million of rail personnel.   

Regarding the activities in the field of adopting railway to climate change, In 2009 the UIC launched a project named ARISCC, (Adaptation of Railway Infrastructure to Climate Change) which was finalized in late 2010. The project found good practice examples and case studies of adaptation plans and made recommendations on how to develop these strategies. In 2016–2017, the UIC led the initiative RailAdapt which was designed to provide UIC members with a strategic framework to build long-term resilience. The Rail Adapt vision is for “a transport system in which the world's railways have acquired the flexibility to intelligently adjust to climate change, thereby providing their economies and societies with reliable and cost-efficient transportation services”. The main outcome of this project was the framework document Rail Adapt - Adapting the railway for the future.