Collecting evidence from distributed sources to evaluate railway suicide and trespass prevention measures

It can be difficult to select from available safety preventative measures, especially where there is limited evidence of effectiveness in different contexts. This paper describes application of a method to identify and evaluate wide-ranging preventative measures for rail suicide and trespass fatalities. Evidence from literature and industry sources was collated and reviewed in a two stage process to achieve consensus among experts on the likely effects of the measures and factors influencing their implementation. Multiple evaluation criteria were used to examine the measures from different perspectives. Fencing, awareness campaigns and different types of organisational initiatives were recommended for further testing. This is the first time evidence has been collected internationally across such a range of preventative measures. Commentary is provided on using this type of approach to select safety measures from a pool of prevention options, including how re-framing the scope of the exercise could identify alternative options for prevention. Practitioner summary: The findings give insight to how different measures work in different ways and how industry can consider this in strategic initiatives. The method could be used in future studies with different frames of reference (e.g. different timescales, level of ambition and safety context e.g. railway crossings or highway fatalities)

Design solutions to improve resilience of metro vehicle to blast events

Considerable effort is being devoted by researchers and stakeholders in order to improve the safety of metro systems with regard to terrorist attacks. The issue has been addressed by many researchers, taking into account the bow-tie model of safety management, in which the node is the terrorist attack, with on one side the causes of the attack (e.g. political issues, technical weaknesses) and on the other side the consequences (e.g. human, organisational, economical). The common goal is to implement a line of defence to isolate these causes and consequences, in order to prevent the attack from occurring and, should it happen, to mitigate its consequences as much as possible. This work takes into account the identified common attack methodologies and the behaviour of the surviving passengers in order to improve the situation management, assist the evacuation of and rescue to survivors. Moreover, technological improvements to the structure and critical systems of the vehicle have been devised and tested in real situation. This paper focuses particularly on the behaviour of people in blast situation, and presents the conclusions of the project on these effects and the related improvements of the vehicles design in order to improve resilience and survivability to blast

Idiosyncratic representation of peripersonal space depends on the success of one's own motor actions, but also the successful actions of others! - Fig 5

<p>Upper part: Sketch of the apparatus and stimuli display in the target-selection and the reachability-judgment tasks (Exp. 2). Left: The probability of selecting a reward-yielding target was 50% in the proximal and distal spaces. Right: Two participants were facing each other (position A and B). In the target-selection task, the 32 targets were directly visible on the touch-screen table. In the reachability-judgment task, the 31 targets were visible through the mirror projecting the image displayed by the video projector on the touch-screen table. Lower part: Time sequence of the tasks presentation.</p

Idiosyncratic representation of peripersonal space depends on the success of one's own motor actions, but also the successful actions of others! - Fig 4

<p>(A) Mean amplitude of manual reaching actions in the target-selection task across the 400 target selections (Exp. 1) for the Far group, Control group and Near group. (B) Mean percentage of target selected in the proximal space (row 1, 2, 3) across the 40 blocks. The three groups diverged from the 3^rd block. (C) Mean number and percentage of reward-yielding targets selected in the Far group, Control group and Near group.</p

Idiosyncratic representation of peripersonal space depends on the success of one's own motor actions, but also the successful actions of others! - Fig 1

<p>Upper part: Sketch of the apparatus and stimuli display in the target-selection and the reachability-judgment tasks of Exp. 1. Left: The probability of selecting a reward-yielding target was 50%, 25% or 75% in the proximal and distal spaces. Centre: In the target-selection task, the 32 targets were directly visible on the touch-screen table. In the reachability-judgment task, the 31 targets were visible through the mirror as displayed by the video projector. Right: the position of each target displayed (32 out of 42 possible locations separated by 12.65 x 8.30 cm) was randomly computed from the centre of the cell ± 60 pixels). Lower part: Timeline for the tasks.</p

Idiosyncratic representation of peripersonal space depends on the success of one's own motor actions, but also the successful actions of others! - Fig 6

<p>(A) Density map of the targets selected in the target-selection task by all participants across the 408 manual reaching actions in the social experiment. Blue colour indicates infrequent selection; Red colour indicates frequent selection. (B) Mean amplitude of manual reaching actions in the first and last blocks for the participants in position A and position B (Exp. 2). Stars indicate significant differences.</p

Mean reaction time (SD in brackets) in the reachability-judgment task of Exp 1.

<p>Mean reaction time (SD in brackets) in the reachability-judgment task of Exp 1.</p