First General Assembly

Posted: Tuesday 7 August 2007

Delegates

The first General Assembly was held on 12 July 2007

Rail Safety Website Launched

Posted: Monday 24 July 2006

UNIFE has launched a new website Eurailsafe.net.

The aim of this Network of Excellence is to promote and enhance the safety of the rail system. This is achieved by bringing together rail operators, suppliers to the rail industry, and academia in order to:

* Encourage information exchange on safety-related issues such as technological innovation, and standards, specifications and codes of practice.
* Identify, prioritise and initiate future research activities.

This website is seen as the tool for such communication.

It does not operate in isolation. The intention is to compliment the activity of existing safety-related projects and ensure that the work is aligned with the strategic research objectives of the European railway system through giving open access to information from previous and ongoing Rail Safety projects such as:

* Traincol
* Safetrain
* Safetram
* Trainsafe
* SAFEINTERIORS

The network encouraged by this website will aid the Industry to:

* Move from national safety and security philosophies to a harmonised European approach.
* Align national codes governing safety in operation, certification, testing, acceptance and maintenance.
* Define common rules for railway operation across a single European rail network.
* Develop modelling tools to improve the understanding of rail vehicles and passenger dynamics, particularly with respect to crash behaviour.

Furthermore it will aid the Industry to:

* Propose enhancements to safety standards within the rail industry.
* Improve global system safety through vehicle research, procedural systems analysis and training.
* Integrate the land transport industries by cross-fertilisation and full co-operation between researchers, systems integrators and suppliers.
* Recommend innovative research (leading to individual proposals), priorities for future research actions and identify (virtual) centres of excellence.

It should be emphasised that the European railway system is regarded as an intrinsically safe Transportation system since it is not guided and controlled by the driver but by the infrastructure in terms of the track and by a safe signalling system. Only in the rare cases of failures of these systems imposed by external sources may the occupants be injured.

In working to improve rail safety the industry experts continue to work towards the achievement of the ERRAC 2020 goals

Website contacts are:

General Management: Bernard Von Wullerstorff, UNIFE

Web site coordination: Lynne Brampton, Bombardier

Web site management: Adam Foster Web Engineering