Learning from failure: Research initiatives towards improving resilience of the Swedish railway system

This paper includes a brief description of some closely related ongoing research activities aiming at learning from failures in order to improve the resilience of the Swedish railway system. One of these activities includes the development of a method aiming at assessing the capability for restoring the service of the railway system after strains affecting its technical, and often highly interdependent, elements. In the event of incidents affecting these technical elements, adequate capability of those actors responsible for restoring the system is important. The method is based on a systems approach, and builds on evaluation of a number of incidents that have occurred on a section of the Swedish railway system in workshop sessions, involving persons with substantial knowledge and experience from recovery operations. By varying these incidents by so-called counterfactual scenarios the capability to return to normal operation after different types and magnitudes of strain can be demonstrated. Hence, the method is useful for evaluating the preparedness for future incidents affecting the railway system. Another study where a similar starting point is used, but where a wider spectrum of serious incidents and accidents form the basis for analysis, is a study focusing on the ability to learn from accidents that have stricken the railway system. Incidents and accidents, and in particular the subsequent accident investigation reports that are issued by the accident investigation boards in Sweden, Norway an