Support Systems Railway Operation
Systems Support for Railway Operation is a set of technologies intended to avoid human error in the operational railway. R & T develops solutions that aim to provide support for operating systems that are commonly used self. These solutions are twofold:
- Complement information provided by autonomous systems, and
- Introducing a new barrier to human error, using technologies that do not fail completely independent at the same instant that the usual stand-alone systems.
We could list some of the many accidents recently occurred at international level for security flaws, and in many cases, human error, for example:
- United States, Washington DC, June 22, 2009, a subway train collides with another waiting permission to move forward. The track circuits used to detect the second train did not report the presence. 9 people killed and several injured.
- Mexico, San Rafael, April 18, 2009, a train rear-end collisions with another that was stopped. Apparently, a failure happend in the traffic control system, and the accident was caused by human error.
- Tanzania, Dodoma, March 29, 2009, a passenger train collides with a freight train. Without a Centralized Traffic Control, the station operator allowed the advance of a train track to be occupied by a freight train. 6 people die.
- India, Orissa, February 13, 2009, a passenger train derailed. Research suggests that the train exceeded the speed limit of the section in which derailed. 15 people die and over 100 injured.
In many cases, accidents are caused by several circumstances coincide in space and time: Failure of security autonomous systems, human errors, failures in protocols, etc.