A Framework for Risk Management in Railway Sector: Application to Road-Rail Level Crossings

A major concern in the rail industry worldwide is to ensure safety in railway operations in general and at road/rail level crossings in particular where the number of fatal accidents has been significantly increasing over the years. Accidents at level crossings are the result of complex interactions between factors arising from the design and operations of level crossings. An important first step towards eliminating the causes of these accidents is through understanding and assessing the risks associated with a given level crossing and acting on them. This paper introduces a risk management framework that serves this purpose. The suggested framework involves several activities, including, hazard identification, risk analysis, evaluation, treatment and control. Having explained the suggested framework, this paper illustrates how it can be systematically applied to mitigate risk at a given Moroccan level crossing. The efficiency and success of the suggested risk management framework are pending its integration in a global rail safety management system also introduced in the paper.

[1]  S. Kaplan,et al.  On The Quantitative Definition of Risk , 1981 .

[2]  Allard E. Dembe,et al.  Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle , 2001 .

[3]  Lawrence M. Leemis,et al.  Reliability: Probabilistic Models and Statistical Methods , 1994 .

[4]  James P. Lewis,et al.  Natural Disasters and Vulnerability Analysis , 1981 .

[5]  Trevor Kletz.  Hazop—past and future , 1997 .

[6]  Vlasta Molak,et al.  Fundamentals of Risk Analysis and Risk Management , 1996 .

[7]  C. H. Lie,et al.  Fault Tree Analysis, Methods, and Applications ߝ A Review , 1985, IEEE Transactions on Reliability.

[8]  Warwick Gullett,et al.  Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle , 2000 .

[9]  Benjamin S. Blanchard,et al.  System Engineering Management , 1991 .

[10]  John Haigh,et al.  Probabilistic Risk Analysis: Foundations and Methods , 2003 .

[11]  B. Wisner,et al.  At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters , 1996 .

[12]  C. Julius Wang,et al.  What Every Engineer Should Know about Reliability and Risk Analysis , 1993 .

[13]  Clifton A. Ericson,et al.  Hazard Analysis Techniques for System Safety , 2005 .

[14]  Robert E. Melchers,et al.  Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Engineering Systems , 1997 .

[15]  Joseph G. Voelkel,et al.  Guide to Quality Control , 1982 .

[16]  Burton Al.  The environment as hazard , 1978 .

[17]  Roger W. Berger,et al.  Guide to Quality Control , 1982 .

[18]  Eric R. Ziegel,et al.  System Reliability Theory: Models, Statistical Methods, and Applications , 2004, Technometrics.

[19]  John X. Wang,et al.  What Every Engineer Should Know About Risk Engineering and Management , 2000 .