Limits and opportunities of risk analysis application in railway systems

Risk Analysis is a collection of methods widely used in many industrial sectors. In the transport sector it has been particularly used for air transport applications. The reasons for this wide use are well-known: risk analysis allows to approach the safety theme in a stochastic - rather than deterministic - way, it forces to break down the system in sub-components, last but not least it allows a comparison between solutions with different costs, introducing de facto an element of economic feasibility of the project alternatives in the safety field. Apart from the United Kingdom, in Europe the application of this tool in the railway sector is relatively recent. In particular Directive 2004/49/EC (the "railway safety directive") provides for compulsory risk assessment in relation to the activities of railway Infrastructure Managers (IMs) and of Railway Undertakings (RUs). Nevertheless the peculiarity of the railway system - in which human, procedural, environmental and technological components have a continuous interchange and in which human responsibilities and technological functions often overlap - induced the EC to allow wide margins of subjectivity in the interpretation of risk assessment. When enacting Commission Regulation (EC) No 352/2009 which further regulates this subject, a risk assessment is considered positive also if the IM or RU declare to take safety measures widely used in normal practice. The paper shows the results of a structured comparative analysis of the rail sector and other industrial sectors, which illustrate the difficulties, but also the opportunities, of a transfer towards the railway system of the risk analysis methods currently in use for the other systems

Death related to a congenital vascular anomaly of pulmonary hamartoma type: Malpractice or tragic fatality?

In forensic pathology, apparently straightforward cases can often hide rarities that, if not correctly interpreted, can alter the results of the entire investigation, leading to misinterpretations. This occurs when the investigation is conducted to assess medical malpractice. An unexpected death, with no known apparent cause, is often linked to an underlying disease process of unclear etiological origin whose nature can, unfortunately, be properly investigated only post-mortem. This presentation shows a case study, in which it was possible to reconduct the death of a patient to a natural pathology and not to medical treatment. Here, the authors illustrate a case with a hamartoma developed in chronic inflammatory conditions (bronchiectasis) that was difficult to differentiate from lung cancer due to the inability to perform specific instrumental examinations. The hamartoma, usually benign and identifiable by standard instrumental investigations, in this case, led to the patient’s death precisely during the execution of a bronchoscopy. However, in the absence of a certain cause of death, public opinion unanimously attributes a patient’s disease to medical error. Indeed, a routine practice such as bronchoscopy should not cause death and consequently, the doctor must have made a mistake. Fortunately, the autopsy not only demonstrated the origin of the bleeding but also unveiled the reason for this, as rare congenital lung disease. Fate, one might say

Multimodal, intermodal and terminals

The chapter looks at rail freight terminals, rail--sea interfaces, in particular, as part of a multimodal, or integrated transportation network. Terminals are key infrastructure for linking individual transport modes and governing and managing their interchange in a manner that creates a seamless and sustainable transportation system. Therefore, their performance is critical for maximising transport efficiency and modes integration. This chapter focused on how to measure the operational performance of rail freight terminals in a framework of integrated transportation network. In an increasingly competitive and commercialised world, there is an increasing demand to be able to rank transport options and routes in some way. Drawing on new material, this talk attempts to outline possible methods for how to measure the performance of rail terminals. It focuses on the identification of suitable methods to assess performance by key indicators. Intermodality demands for going beyond safeguarding the individual modes to ensuring the security of the intermodal inter-faces (terminals), the nodes that link and integrate passenger and freight flows. That demands for an integrated holistic approach built on the collaboration between international, national organisations and operators. The study put emphasis on the security challenges and threats to freight transport generally and in rail-sea interfaces more specifically. It moves onto the regulations already governing security in rail-sea interfaces. Finally, it focus on the role that infrastructure planning can play in improving security and offer some conclusions and recommendations for the futur

A global analysis of Y-chromosomal haplotype diversity for 23 STR loci

In a worldwide collaborative effort, 19,630 Y-chromosomes were sampled from 129 different populations in 51 countries. These chromosomes were typed for 23 short-tandem repeat (STR) loci (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385ab, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635, GATAH4, DYS481, DYS533, DYS549, DYS570, DYS576, and DYS643) and using the PowerPlex Y23 System (PPY23, Promega Corporation, Madison, WI). Locus-specific allelic spectra of these markers were determined and a consistently high level of allelic diversity was observed. A considerable number of null, duplicate and off-ladder alleles were revealed. Standard single-locus and haplotype-based parameters were calculated and compared between subsets of Y-STR markers established for forensic casework. The PPY23 marker set provides substantially stronger discriminatory power than other available kits but at the same time reveals the same general patterns of population structure as other marker sets. A strong correlation was observed between the number of Y-STRs included in a marker set and some of the forensic parameters under study. Interestingly a weak but consistent trend toward smaller genetic distances resulting from larger numbers of markers became apparent.Peer reviewe

Railway safety performance: the adoption of Common Safety Target

Aim of the study is the individuation of the problems and criticalities caused by the introduction of the Directive 2004/49/CE relative to the railways safety. The European Railway Agency has been the mandate to identify the actual safety level of Member States. The role of ERA is to measure the safety rules, to harmonize and to supervise the railway safety. Particular attention is placed to the importance of incidentality data collection. Obstacle is the absence of a common approach to definition (e.g. : serious injury, etc.) and classification. Other critical point is represented by lack of homogeneity and disaggregation of data collection

Development and validation of tool simulation for transit time through freight terminals.

The railway freight terminals play a key role within the multimodal logistic chain. Therefore, the transit time through these terminals represents one of the most relevant. It is a basic node in a transportation network, where thousand of daily ecisions are taken to manage this sustained flow of containers. A decision support system for the management of an intermodal container terminal is presented and in particular. A simulation tool it has been developed. The role of simulation becomes of paramount importance in such a setting. The tool is a discrete event simulation. A national case study is examined

Ergodic hidden control neural network for modelling of the speech process

This work deals with the extension of the Hidden Control Neural Network HCNN) architecture to the Ergodic case, i.e. if all the control state sequences are allowed. This scheme gives a deeper understanding of the modelling capabilities offered by the HCNN formalism. In fact, the control input blnary digits status can be considered as the presence/absence of a posteriori defined binary phonetic features, forcing the Network to produce a low prediction error on pairs of speech frames. Major improvements of the technique has been found after normalisation of the output vector components by the prediction error standard deviations. Other improvements arise from the extension to a second order prediction, and an appropriate pruning of the allowed control states transition matrix. Re-wiring of the original architecture as a recurrent network allows for the re-synthesis of smooth spectral trajectories, once the recurrent network is fed by the optimal control sequence found by Dinamic programming when matching real speech against the HCNN Control Input.The authors deal with the extension of the hidden control neural network (HCNN) architecture to the ergodic case, i.e., if all the control state sequences are allowed. This scheme gives a deeper understanding of the modeling capabilities offered by the HCNN formalism. In fact, the control input binary digits status can be considered as the presence/absence of a posteriori defined binary phonetic features, forcing the network to produce a low prediction error on pairs of speech frames. Major improvements of the technique have been found after normalization of the output vector components by the prediction error standard deviations. Other improvements arise from the extension to a second order prediction, and an appropriate pruning of the allowed control states transition matrix. Rewiring of the original architecture as a recurrent network allows for the resynthesis of smooth spectral trajectories, once the recurrent network is fed by the optimal control sequence found by dynamic programming when matching real speech against the HCNN control input

Containers Management Simulation in Short Sea Shipping

The increase of maritime traffic and competition in freight transport requires to organize effectively the goods movement within a maritime terminal. In this framework special attention should be paid to the containerized transport, that represents a high percentage of freight traffic. The standardization of freight transport by container allows the identification of functional phases related to loading and unloading operations of the ship and related to container storage management, particularly for short sea shipping traffic fed by and feeding transcontinental traffic. These functional phases can be differently developed based on different equipment. The object of this paper is to describe the development of a discrete event model for the simulation of actions required for unloading of containers from the ship and their storage in assigned stocks. Main aim of this model is to identify possible criticalities in the operational phases and their resolution through targeted measures. Calibration and validation of the model was carried out through its application to the case study represented by the Italian Terminal of Civitavecchia

Analisi tecnica dei corridoi ferroviari TEN-T di collegamento tra i porti del nord-est italiano e l'Europa Centrale // Technical analysis of the TEN-T rail corridors connecting the Italian north-eastern ports to Central Europe

I miglioramenti infrastrutturali e i relativi investimenti hanno un ruolo cruciale nel processo d’integrazione regionale, come chiaramente evidenziato dalle politiche TEN-T (rete di trasporto Trans-Europea). Attraverso il finanziamento di vari progetti, infatti, la Commissione Europea promuove l’interoperabilità e l’efficienza del sistema di trasporto europeo, eliminando colli di bottiglia, migliorando le connessioni transfrontaliere e intermodali e sormontando ostacoli tecnici. In tale contesto, questo contributo cerca di analizzare l’importanza di reti di trasporto europee ben strutturate e interconnesse, esaminando la capacità di trasporto merci su rotaia dai porti di Venezia, Trieste e Capodistria nel nord-est italiano a tre destinazioni in Europa centrale, vale a dire Vienna, Budapest e Monaco di Baviera. L’articolo esamina le caratteristiche tecniche dei percorsi dai tre porti alle stazioni finali selezionate (attraverso i corridoi ferroviari TEN-T), fornendo prima una panoramica delle attuali strozzature del sistema e offrendo poi un’analisi degli investimenti programmati (progetti TEN-T) e dei relativi miglioramenti in termini di capacità. Lo studio e i suoi risultati richiamano l’importanza di analizzare i fondi e gli interventi di trasporto da un punto di vista intermodale, al fine di realizzare un sistema di trasporto più efficiente e sostenibile. Per garantire pieno sostegno alle autostrade del mare e alla competitività dei porti, per esempio, i finanziamenti e gli interventi dovrebbero essere finalizzati ad eliminare o alleviare gli attuali colli di bottiglia e le relative limitazioni in termini di capacità.Infrastructure enhancements and related investments have a crucial role in the process of regional integration, as clearly highlighted by the TEN-T (Trans-European Network in Transport) policy. Through the funding of several projects, in fact, the European Commission promotes the interoperability and efficiency of the European transport system by removing bottlenecks, by improving cross-border and inter-modal connections and by overcoming technical barriers. In such a context, this article tries to explore the importance of well-structured and interconnected European transport networks by investigating the rail freight capacity of the routes from the Italian north-eastern ports of Venice, Trieste and Koper to three destinations in Central Europe, namely Wien, Budapest and Munich. The paper examines the technical characteristics of the routes (through the TEN-T rail corridors) from the three ports to the selected rail terminals, providing first an overview of the current bottlenecks of the system and then offering an analysis of planned investments (TEN-T projects) and related enhancements in terms of capacity. The research and its outcomes remind the importance of analysing the transport funds and interventions from an inter-modal point of view, in order to achieve a more efficient and sustainable transport system. To guarantee full support to the Motorways of the Sea and to ports competitiveness, for example, funding and interventions should be aimed at eliminating or relieving the current bottlenecks and the related limitations in terms of capacity