For the safety by design, group assignment, the topic chosen by our group was the Safety management for Railways. This was the topic chosen, since nowadays, rail transportation, as the lowest CO2-emission mode of transport, emerges as a key alternative to road and air transport, both in terms of passenger and freight. Consequently, improving its competitiveness is a priority as it is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions and help fight climate change. Rail transport, however, suffers from several factors arising from its own historical development and its inherent nature that hamper the competitiveness of the sector by making cross-border traffic complex and difficult to manage. Among these, for example, the differences in gauges, electrification systems or administrative procedures, that makes it difficult for trains to run internationally while increasing operating costs. As a result, the competitiveness of rail transport is hampered while other modes of transport such as road and air do not face similar barriers. The safety of railways is ensured with train control systems (TCS) and signaling control systems (SCS). TCS is the mechanism put in place to ensure that trains stop where necessary and travel at a safe speed for the line. SCS are the process by which control is exercised over train movements by way of railway signals and block systems to ensure that trains operate safely, over the correct route and to the proper timetable. Various railway signaling technologies have been introduced over the years in different parts of the world. The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a signaling and train control system promoted by the European Commission (EC) for use throughout Europe. This will be the main focus of the assignment.
In the first section of this assignment we will present the ERTMS system: explain what it is, what are its goals, its main components, the benefits of adopting ERTMS and more detailed information will be provided.
The second section of the assignment is dedicated to the principles for safe integration. In this section the environment surrounding the system, the system itself and the people that have an interest in the system are presented. Also, a safety cube is available to demonstrate how these 3 components interact with each other.
The next section of the assignment is dedicated to safety objectives. Here the concept of system integration level (SIL) is going to be explained and a SIL environment in which the system is suitable to be used within will be picked. Also, in this section, the regulations and standards and safety requirements that must be fulfilled by our system are shown.
The following section of the assignment is dedicated to the identification and analysis of the system’s hazards. In this section, we will be resorting to the history of accidents and the safety cube (presented in the third section) to list the hazards. We will then use hazard risk indexes to figure out which hazards are unacceptable and give a list of measures to try to design this hazards out, or at least reduce their impact. The mentioned risk indexes are based on the severity and probability of the hazards listed.
In the last section of the assignment, the safety culture and safety indicators will be explored.
The complete report and presentation can be consulted through this link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-W5jBe6wcBedOkhCo89_RkfAcXi1–IT?usp=sharing