Jean-Louis Boulanger

Role of Supervision Systems in Railway Safety

This paper describes how the new generation of supervision systems in the railway industry can achieve operation from display process variables to all automated control where the human just monitors the automaton. In the railway specific industry, supervision is organized in switching zones and aims to be centralized in an Integrated Control Center. These centers implement integrated and computer based systems that perform train protection, train operation and supervision. Thus railway dispatchers using supervision have their tasks considerably simplified. Although considered today as not safety critical, railway supervision systems can contribute to safety in some scenarios where an appropriate decision of a supervision operator could notably reduce the severity of accidents. That is in particular the case for residual scenarios (intervention of maintenance teams on the tracks, manual operation of trains not protected by train protection system, coupling/uncoupling, emergency requiring the stopping and evacuation of a train etc) only covered by procedure, thus requiring human intervention by a person supposed correctly informed on the state of the system, thanks to the data provided by the supervision system.

Role Of Supervision Systems In Railway Safety

New generation of supervision systems in industry can achieve operation from display process variables to all automated control where human is just monitoring automaton. In railway specific industry, supervision is organised in switching zones and aims to be centralised in an Integrated Control Centre. Such centres implements integrated and computer based systems that perform train protection, train operation and supervision. Thus railway dispatchers using supervision have their tasks considerably simplified. Although considered today as not safety critical, railway supervision systems can contribute to safety in some scenarios where an appropriate decision of a supervision operator could notably reduce the severity of accidents. That is in particular the case for residual scenarios (intervention of maintenance teams on the tracks, manual operation of trains not protected by train protection system, coupling / uncoupling, emergency requiring the stop and the evacuation of a train...) only covered by procedure, thus requiring a human intervention by a person supposed correctly informed on the state of the system, thanks to the data provided by the supervision system

Safety of Railway Control Systems: A New Preliminary Risk Analysis Approach

Preliminary risk analysis (PRA) is a methodology used in critical systems safety studies. It is primarily used at the preliminary stage of the system¿s design so as to determine the scenarios of potential accidents, to evaluate their probabilities of occurrence (frequency) as well as the severity of the resulting consequences and to propose solutions (preventive and/or mitigative safeguards) in order to reduce the risk level in terms of severity/occurrence (to reduce the frequency of the contributors or reduce the severity of the accident). The preliminary risk analysis was largely used in several industrial fields (aeronautics, weapons systems, chemistry, railway...) in order to study the safety of the systems. From one field to another, from one expert to another, many extremely different approaches and methods are used to carry out this analysis. Moreover, the formats representing the results of the PRA are often varied as well as the terminology and the concepts related to the PRA. The main goal of this paper, completed within the framework of project ANR-PREDIT-SECUGUIDE, is to propose a PRA method and to determine standard contents of PRA to be used in the context of the railway systems.

Dispatcher reliability analysis: SPICA-RAIL experiments

Although considered as not safety critical (safety function being performed by other sub-systems), railway supervision systems can contribute to hazardous scenarios. It is of primary importance to identify this type of scenarios and evaluate the behaviour of human operators. A state of the art in human reliability is presented. This article presents an experimental protocol based on an automatic train supervision system coupled to a traffic simulator. It allows to gather data for human reliability evaluation and man-machine performance study.

SAFETY OF RAILWAY CONTROL SYSTEMS: A NEW PRELIMINARY RISK ANALYSIS APPROACH

Preliminary risk analysis (PRA) is a methodology used in critical systems safety studies. It is primarily used at the preliminary stage of the systems design so as to determine the scenarios of potential accidents, to evaluate their probabilities of occurrence (frequency) as well as the severity of the resulting consequences and to propose solutions (preventive and/or mitigative safeguards) in order to reduce the risk level in terms of severity/occurrence (to reduce the frequency of the contributors or reduce the severity of the accident). The PRA was largely used in several industrial fields (aeronautics, weapons systems, chemistry, railways etc.) in order to study the safety of the systems. From one field to another, from one expert to another, many extremely different approaches and methods are used to carry out this analysis. Moreover, the formats representing the results of the PRA are often varied as well as the terminology and the concepts related to the PRA. The main goal of this paper, completed within the framework of the ANR-PREDIT-SECUGUIDE project (project financed by the National Agency for Research - France. It aims to study the impact of introducing the New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) into railway systems safety) is to propose a PRA method and to determine standard contents of PRA to be used in the context of the railway control systems by taking into account the impact of NICT. Keywords automatic train control, feared events, new information and communication technologies Language: en

Safety of railway control systems: A new Preliminary risk analysis approach

Preliminary risk analysis (PRA) is a methodology used in critical systems safety studies. It is primarily used at the preliminary stage of the system?s design so as to determine the scenarios of potential accidents, to evaluate their probabilities of occurrence (frequency) as well as the severity of the resulting consequences and to propose solutions (preventive and/or mitigative safeguards) in order to reduce the risk level in terms of severity/occurrence (to reduce the frequency of the contributors or reduce the severity of the accident). The preliminary risk analysis was largely used in several industrial fields (aeronautics, weapons systems, chemistry, railway...) in order to study the safety of the systems. From one field to another, from one expert to another, many extremely different approaches and methods are used to carry out this analysis. Moreover, the formats representing the results of the PRA are often varied as well as the terminology and the concepts related to the PRA. The main goal of this paper, completed within the framework of project ANR-PREDIT-SECUGUIDE, is to propose a PRA method and to determine standard contents of PRA to be used in the context of the railway systems.

Modelling and simulation of the traffic management in a migration phase: example of "Ligne 1" of the Parisian subway

This paper gives a closer look to the subject of the conversion of a conventional metro line into a fully automated operation without interrupting or disturbing the service. In the introduction, we present the Line 1 Automation project as one of the principal aspects of Paris metro’s network modernization plan announced by the Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP). Next we give an overview of the present line 1 and illustrate the decision key elements for choosing it as a target of a fully automatic operation. The following section describes the development of the line 1 model and shows the results made so far. Finally, we expose the conclusions of the present work and the outlooks of the line 1 automation project.