RSSB Podcast: Technology

In this episode, we’re joined once again by Vaibhav Puri, RSSB’s Director of Sector Strategy and Transformation. We’ll explore some of the issues inherent in the adoption and implementation of new technology, our initiatives in this area, and some of the most promising new technological advancements.

This month we’re joined today by Marcus Dacre, RSSB’s Head of Risk and Safety Intelligence. He talks with us about the importance of having good quality health and safety data in the rail industry, what the future holds, and the improvements we’re making to SMIS to aid better data capture.

Good decision making needs the support of good data. So, in this episode you can hear about the work that goes into assuring data quality, and the people behind it.

SMIS is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2022. Hear something of its history, its reason for being, and what it has done for our industry. How SMIS supports risk modelling and safety decision making.

Good information makes for good, evidence-based, safety critical decisions. Much of that information comes from data in the railway’s Safety Management Intelligence System, SMIS. This podcast looks at what’s being done and planned to make it easier and more efficient to use.

One of the railway’s aims is to deliver better customer service. Much of the operating timetable is set many months in advance. But there is also a need to make very-short-term plans. Sometimes just hours in the future. This may be a solution.

This podcast looks at how the the Functional Mock-up Interface can let modelling data outputs be shared collaboratively for better results, without giving away company secrets.

In this episode we look at how the Internet of Things is being trialled to improve passenger experience on Grand Central Railway services.

This podcast looks at the collaborative work done, and to be done, to deliver the Sustainable Rail Strategy, and the actions needed to deliver its goals.

In the last of the When Software Goes Wrong series, we talk about incidents and a concept that will engage your creativity and imagination to think about reasonably foreseeable scenarios - what could go wrong - and how to design them out of your own software-based projects.

In this episode Dr Emma Taylor talks about how good documentation helped a quick recovery when a complex, software-based software system unexpectedly shut down in 2014. The system used to control aircraft movements over the whole of England and Wales.

In this episode Dr Emma Taylor talks about the software issues that caused a collision while testing a new signalling system on a city's metro system, to extract the lessons learned so that we can avoid similar errors on the GB railway.

In this episode Dr Emma Taylor talks about the software issues that caused the Cambrian Line incident, the lessons learned, and the industry's response to recommendation 3 in the RAIB report.

Part 2 of this podcast looks at the culture change that will be needed to address digital safety threats.  The need for traditional design engineers to broaden their sphere of thinking, and to bring others into design conversations.  Emma also talks about the need to start thinking about reasonably foreseeable scenarios. For us all to start thinking about what could go wrong when you consider the digital components within your physical assets.

Part 1 of this podcast looks at the NIS Regulations 2018and their effect on the rail industry. Who should be concerned, and what we need to do to demonstrate compliance and avoid fines of up to £17m. What to do until we have a good body of precursors to digital incidents; and what aspects or operations should be considered as safety critical.

This podcast looks at how greater use of digital technologies will impact asset integrity, and the increased collaboration among previously separate fields that will be needed to deliver a better, safer railway.