Common approach for supervising the railway safety performance

Abstract

The key aspect of maintaining and improving safety is to supervise the safety targets whenever possible at the European and national levels. The railway safety directive aims to set Common Safety targets (CSTs), which are expressed in risk acceptance criteria that must be reached by the different parts of the rail system and the system as a whole. This paper intends to summarize the main results of the Safety Management and interoperability thematic network for railway systems (SAMNET) project. SAMNET belongs to the Fifth Framework Program of the European Commission and addresses the Safety Directives issues. It focuses on the development of Common Safety Targets (CSTs) that are used for supervising the safety performance. The Common Safety Indicators (CSI) that are used to ensure the measured safety performances (e.g. the effectiveness of Safety Management System) are discussed. The Common Safety Methods (CSMs) to ensure that the targets are correctly assigned and followed at all levels (company, state, Europe) are presented in the paper.