The 1st workshop for Asian Safety Database (SDB), held in Goa (India) on 23 November 2011 in conjunction with the 12th Asian Regional Assembly (ARA), was a big success. Indian Railways (IR), East Japan Railway Company (JR East), Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), Russian Railways (RZD), Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation (THSRC), UlaanBaatar Railways (UBTZ) and Vietnam Railways (VNR) participated in the workshop.
Asian SDB is one of the Global Projects and its ultimate objective is to share accident data not only among the Asian Region, but also at global level in order to cooperate to reduce accidents throughout the world.
While accident data including critical events and suicides have already been shared with some European members, similar activities have not yet taken place within the other regions., This workshop was therefore a milestone in the field of UIC safety activities.

As a result of the fruitful discussions, the following directions were decided:

• 4 types of accidents, namely collisions, derailments, level crossing accidents and train fires are scoped in Asian SDB
• Regional conditions and peculiarities at each member railway should be taken into consideration when common definitions of these accidents are determined (to be decided at the next workshop in Taiwan, in conjunction with the next ARA in April 2012)
• The agreement to the “Letter of Intent on Mutual Commitment” between the participating members of Asian SDB shall be submitted by them before the end of January 2012
• UIC HQ is requested to establish the extranet for Asian SDB on the UIC website to share accident data between participating members soon after February 2012
• The participating members will provide their accident or incident data for Asian SDB periodically. (The first data will be provided before the end of March 2012)

After the discussion, IR, JR East, RTRI, THSRC and RZD gave their presentations about what they are doing to improve safety and how they respond to accidents, i.e. disaster management.
Finally, Mr Jerzy Wisniewski, Director of the Fundamental Values Department at UIC HQ, expressed his strong support to Asian SDB and explained about human factors development in Europe.

Asian SDB is open to all UIC Asian members. Furthermore, the “Letter of Intent” on Mutual Commitment, stipulating the rules of confidentiality regarding accident data, is being kept among the participating members.