A methodology for introducing the impact of risk analysis in local railways improvements decisions

Abstract

Maintaining a high-quality service at acceptable safety level is very demanding on resources for railway sector. This is even more true for local railways, where economical and organizational resources incur various limitations if compared to the case of the national network. Furthermore, due to the significant differences not only in management but also in infrastructural characteristics, the application of criteria and standards born and commonly used in the environment of national railways to local ones leads to a non-optimal use of resources and an overall reduction in the quality of service. Another limit that local railways have to face in order to standardize safety efficiency to the national network is linked to accident and Hazardous Events data occurring in the system, that could be not sufficient to define reliable forecasting models. In order to cope with all of those constraint and to optimize management strategies for local railways, this work provides a framework of a quantitative risk management methodology able support the Infrastructure Manager in decision-making process for asset development. The proposed methodology allows to quantitatively estimate the impact on risk of changes to the system and management choices, prioritizing and optimizing the intervention strategies on the system. To overcome the problems related to the lack of accidental data, the methodology allows to broad the accidental database to networks similar to the one analysed, calibrating the information according to the differences in terms of safety equipment between the systems. Moreover, through the analysis of all factors influencing the frequency and consequences of accidents and their interrelationships, the methodology provides a complete view on the level of risk associated with all parts of the system, providing powerful support for development choices and management optimization even to heterogeneous systems such as local railways.