More than 40 people participated in the 6th TreSP Network meeting which was hosted in Belgium in a hybrid format by Infrabel on 1 March 2023, with Dr. Ann Mills, Deputy Director of System Safety & Health at RSSB and Chair of the TreSP-Network, opening the session.

The event had an exciting agenda with the following talks and presentations being given:

• David Van de Sype, Head of Safety at INFRABEL, gave an introductory speech on “A short overview of general safety issues on the INFRABEL network”
• Kinson Lam, Senior Engineer for Railways at the Electrical & Mechanical Services Department, HKSAR Government, shared information regarding a pilot project on “Trespassing detection systems in Hong Kong”
• Amélia Santos Areias together with Graça Brígida, Nuno Gregório, and Ricardo Patrício from the Portuguese NSA addressed “Accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion & railway suicides”
• Becky Bray, Programme Manager – Suicide Prevention at Network Rail, presented on “Geotargeted post incident support”
• Gaëtan van Overmeiren, Team Leader for Safety Project Management at the Infrabel Safety Department, presented “New technologies against trespassing on the Belgian railway network” and gave information on the upcoming technical visit to be held that afternoon

Some of the RESTRAIL Toolbox measures were then discussed regarding their need for regular updating (see https://www.restrail.eu/toolbox/). The RESTRAIL Toolbox is a problem-solving guide for implementing measures to prevent railway suicides and trespassing accidents and to mitigate the post-incident consequences.

Katarzyna Kucharek, President of the Board of the PKP Group Foundation, and UIC’s Isabelle Fonverne encouraged the participants to send in their abstracts on trespass and suicide prevention, or on level crossing safety activities for the TRESPAD and ILCAD launch conferences, which are generously being hosted by PKP and the PKP Group Foundation on 14-16 June 2023, in Warsaw, Poland.

If you wish to submit an abstract on level crossing safety and more precisely on “agricultural and industrial crossing users” (the 2023 ILCAD theme), please fill in the form below by 31 March 2023:
https://uic.org/events/call-for-papers-ilcad-2023-conference-15-june-2023-warsaw.

If you wish to submit an abstract on “Trespass and suicide prevention” to be presented at the TRESPAD Conference on 14 June 2023, please fill in the form below by 31 March 2023:
https://uic.org/events/call-for-papers-trespad-launch-conference-14-june-2023-warsaw.
More information at https://ilcad.org/ilcad/launch-conference.

The final part of the session saw the unanimous election of Nils la Cour as the TreSP-Network Vice-Chair to support the Chair of the UIC Safety Working Group, Dr. Ann Mills, RSSB, who was elected in June 2021.

Dr. Ann Mills, RSSB, Head of Health and Safety Management
Chair of TreSP-Network

Nils la Cour
Head of Department, DSB Safety
SMS and Investigation

La Cour joined the Danish State Railway (DSB) in 2015. He previously held a position as Head of Office in the Danish Traffic Authority where he was in charge of overseeing airports, air traffic control, airspace and providing communication, navigation, surveillance, and meteorological services in Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. He also has a background in the Royal Danish Navy and civil air traffic control, and has a Master’s degree from Copenhagen Business School.

Within DSB, la Cour is in charge of management reporting, the safety management system, internal oversight, risk profiles, and incident investigation. Railway travel is potentially the safest form of transport in Denmark, however there are still incidents, with the most common being suicides and persons hit by trains. Even though the numbers are low, DSB, as the Danish national carrier and the largest railway undertaking in Denmark by far, has decided to work to reduce these figures. To this end, Nils is working in close collaboration with dedicated DSB staff and external partners from the sciences as well as from NGOs. Over the last two years DSB have promoted anti-trespassing campaigns aimed at young people and have developed a safety universe in Minecraft for use in the classroom for children aged 8 to 12 years.

More information on the Trespass activities at UIC can be found at https://uic.org/safety/trespass-and-suicide-prevention/.