Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/M008517/1
A tool to improve prediction of real time environmental risk to UK rail infrastructure
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Mr J Sadler, University of Southampton, School of Geography
- Grant held at:
- University of Southampton, School of Geography
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Science Topics:
- Railway Operations
- Transport Ops & Management
- Geographic modelling
- Visualisation
- Cartography and GIS
- Information & Knowledge Mgmt
- Data Modelling
- Manufact. Enterprise Ops& Mgmt
- Manufacturing Risk Assessment
- Abstract:
- Safety performance of the UK railways has improved significantly in recent decades, though over the same period costs have also increased, resulting in an efficiency gap between current industry costs and comparable railways elsewhere in Europe (McNulty 2011). This gap can be partly attributed to the use of overly conservative safety standards, with the potential to be replaced by calculated risk controls accompanied by appropriate risk modelling and assessment. By identifying low risk locations or routes and areas where the risk controls deliver little or no additional safety benefit, the industry could achieve significant cost and efficiency savings through the removal of unnecessary/over-prescriptive control measures (Griffin & Holloway 2012). The proposed research will deliver a model and toolkit to improve prediction of risk to rail infrastructure using environmental information, including weather conditions in real time or, historically, according to user specified scenarios. This adds several new dimensions to RSSB's Safety Risk Model (SRM) and thus provides significant potential to improve risk calculations and controls and provide cost efficiencies for managing the safety of the UK rail infrastructure. The proposed research identifies clear potential advantages to the RSSB stakeholder, who stand to benefit from a much improved Safety Risk Model, taking environmental factors into account. Such benefits would be shared with other rail industry stakeholders, including Network Rail, Department of Transport and other researchers, all informing government rail safety policy, investment and spending decisions. If successful, the developed tool has the potential to be "disruptive", changing "business as usual" practices at the RSSB stakeholder and related rail infrastructure organisations. The tool can provide the introduction of real-time environmental safety risk modelling which has not previously been available in the UK, or reported to be in place elsewhere.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/M008517/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Knowledge Exchange (FEC)
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Innovation - Risk
This grant award has a total value of £44,571
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £15,814 | £6,794 | £5,789 | £14,898 | £873 | £403 |
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