The kick-off meeting for the “Safety Barriers Library” took place this week on 13 February 2023 and follows on from the taskforce’s work in the previous year on the common definition of a Safety Barrier.

Now that a shared understanding of the term has been reached, the taskforce has reunited to go a step further and potentially create a structured “Library of Safety Barriers”.

The project has developed within a digital transformation of Safety Management Systems as they helps stakeholders towards achieving the efficient risk assessment intelligence that a world class railway needs.

Therefore, we believe a direct industry and operator involvement is crucial to the study and would invite companies to join our expert group in this thought-provoking assignment.

The next meeting is planned for 7 March 2023 where the experts will start sharing the operational perspectives of experiences with safety barriers. Through case studies and discussions, and depending on the findings, the next meeting aims to define the potential and optimal methodology for constructing a “Safety Barrier Library Architecture”.

In parallel, the taskforce will also work on the link between the library and the taxonomy developed in EU-CSM ASLP draft law, and how these correspond to the UIC Safety Database. Another challenge is to explore the ways of making safety barriers “assessable and measurable” and to what extent it may have a relationship with Safety Managements System performance.