How the National Control Command and Signalling Defect Recording, Analysis and Corrective Action System (DRACAS) will help rail

Featured story19 July 2023

The National Control Command and Signalling (CCS) Defect Recording, Analysis and Corrective Action System (DRACAS) will be a crucial new tool in the management of rail. It will help prevent operators in one part of the network experiencing identical failures, faults, or defects already experienced in another part of the network, improving safety and saving the industry millions of pounds.

Modern CCS systems like the European Train Control System (ETCS) introduce more signalling equipment, traditionally located trackside, onto trains. The implementation of such systems has undoubtedly modernised the railway industry, but it also brings potential risks. In particular, onboard and trackside equipment is managed by different organisations, making information sharing difficult.

This means that defects within a CCS system can lead to repeated instances of the same negative consequences on multiple occasions. Defects can also affect multiple implementations of the system, subsystem, equipment, or component, in different places. So the risk is not just that a particular problem may occur, but that it may occur repeatedly but be undetected because there is no system designed to detect and analyse relevant data about defects at a nationwide level. A national CCS DRACAS would help.

The national CCS DRACAS is expected to save the rail industry around £231m over the next ten years by alerting affected organisations to faults and failures that have been experienced in other parts of the system, whether they operate there or not. A national CCS DRACAS will increase all organisations’ ability to detect defects, faults, or failures, and help them respond effectively, wherever the defect occurred on the network. A national CCS DRACAS will also be able to analyse data from multiple organisations and data sources to find hidden trends and improvement opportunities.

The main system-wide benefits of a national CCS DRACAS are:

organisations can be alerted to faults or failures they are causing in another part of the system, and vice versa
failures, faults, and defects can be investigated by operational and planning teams at the system level, identifying root causes at this level
appropriate corrective actions can be agreed, implemented, and monitored at the system level, not only at the level of individual operators

To make sure this works there needs to be a ‘Concept of Operations’. The Concept of Operations for the national CCS DRACAS is primarily a series of processes incorporating roles and responsibilities for organisations, supported by an information technology system. It creates a systematic approach that provides a common vision for all relevant organisations. It aims to provide alignment between various stakeholders through a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach that sets out the interactions required. It shows in detail how a national CCS DRACAS would work, so all interested and affected organisations can develop towards the same end goal. Setting out this common vision, and detailing the interactions required between organisations through a systematic approach, makes the future development and implementation of a national system easier and more efficient.

Find out about the roles and responsibilities involved in the National CCS DRACAS.