Development of a quantitative safety risk assessment model for rail safety management system : its application towards assessing and prioritising safety risks at interfaces of railway and highway

In the global view, among other rail safety issues, highway-railway accidents continue to be a major problem from both public health and socio-economic perspectives. It is noted that many research studies have been conducted in the past in relation to developing appropriate models to assess the road traffic safety through collision prediction, but a considerable amount of work has been carried out only regarding safety at “highway-railway” grade crossings. The primary objective of this study is to provide an improved method for rail safety appraisal at “railway-highway” grade crossings through the development and application of suitable safety risk scores (called ‘Safety Risk Index’) with a combination of both accident frequency and accidental consequences prediction models generated for crossings, and also by using these safety risk scores to identify the worst or most dangerous locations. The Safety Risk Index (SRI) is a simple composite index, which can measure, compare and rank safety levels at different risk situations and locations. These safety risk scores are designed to generate an overall grade crossings safety risk, which is based on the combination of three basic risk elements - namely the exposure of the crossing users, the probability of an accident taking place, and the severity of consequences should an accident occur. This method facilitates the assessment of the safety risks at grade crossings and also ranks, identifies and prioritises the worst performing crossings or the problematic crossings (Black-Spots). This model is very simple and easily understood by those with different levels of knowledge on safety. The SRI index based on quantitative methods and developed in this study seems very promising and has great potential to be a major tool for safety risk assessment at grade crossings in various countries. The secondary objective of this study is to provide an index with a single meaningful value for assessing the risk at grade crossings, through the gathering and analysis of data, information and knowledge (from various data sources) on rail safety. The research study also establishes appropriate statistical methodologies in order to develop and to construct a quantitative model for risk assessment