Every year since 2010, the Danish Transport and Construction Agency (Trafik- og Byggestyrelsen) has hosted a full day’s conference on safety in railways and aviation. On 28 October this year, the 5th edition was organised in Copenhagen, Denmark.

This year’s main theme was “Safety in a competitive environment: How will companies and authorities tackle safety under increased competitive pressure?” There were around 400 participants from various organisations and with different backgrounds: staff members from the Danish Transport and Construction Agency, experts from railway and aviation companies, consulting companies etc.

The programme included five presentations during two plenary sessions and several other parallel Railway and Aviation sessions lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes each. Grigore Havârneanu (Research Advisor within UIC’s Security Division) was an invited speaker in one of the Railway sessions. His presentation was entitled: “Permanently coping with railway suicide and trespass for a safer, more secure and more competitive rail transport: Lessons from the RESTRAIL project”.

RESTRAIL (REduction of Suicides and Trespasses on RAILway property) was a three year EU FP7 collaborative research project coordinated by UIC (www.restrail.eu). The project provided guidance and recommendations on how to prevent railway suicide and trespassing accidents and to reduce their consequences.

The talk provided a summary of research conducted in the project, an overview of its practical toolbox for decision-makers (www.restrail.eu/toolbox), and insights into the effectiveness of the available presentations to reduce the frequency and impact of suicide and trespassing incidents.

This presentation is another international dissemination action since the end of the RESTRAIL project in September 2014. The UIC Security Division would like to thank Trafik- og Byggestyrelsen for the invitation to join this conference.