Risk Management - RSSB Graphic Insights
An evidence-led approach to risk management
Safety management is most effective when it is risk and evidence-based. Companies from across GB rail share safety event data. This helps them understand risk and target safety investment.
How the industry manages safety
Taking Safe Decisions sets out the framework that rail companies use to keep people safe and meet wider business objectives. It helps them prioritise safety improvement, identify where to invest, and demonstrate legal compliance.
Click on each section to understand more about the process.
Measuring risk
Risk can be measured using the formula: Risk = Frequency x Consequence. Frequency describes how often an event occurs. Consequence is a measure of the harm associated with the event.
The rail industry uses Fatalities and Weighted Injuries (FWI) to measure safety performance and risk. This metric combines fatalities with different types of injury, which are weighted by severity.
The carousel shows the different passenger injury types covered by the FWI metric. It also includes an example of an event that would fall under each injury type.
Further details of all injury types covered by the FWI metric can be found here.
Click on the injury type to explore the weighting equivalents.
GB rail risk profile
The Safety Risk Model (SRM) provides a network-wide risk profile for Great Britain’s mainline railway. It has underpinned the industry’s evidence and risk-based approach to safety management since the first version was developed over 20 years ago.
The SRM covers a wide range of events that can occur during the operation and maintenance of the railway. You can explore the model structure and hierarchy in the following graphic.
Click through the chart to reveal a subsection of the rail risk profile.
People use the SRM to understand the risk associated with different events. They can compare frequency, consequences and risk.
The graphic below shows an interactive comparison between different events. The size of the bubble represents the risk, which is a product of the frequency and the consequence. The frequency is indicated by the position along the bottom axis. The consequence is indicated by the position up the side axis.
Explore the graph below and click on the bubbles to understand more about five core risk areas.
Some events are rare but potentially very high consequence. Passenger train derailments are in this category. Other events occur frequently but are usually low consequence. Slips, trips and falls in stations are in this category.
The full SRM profile can be explored using the SRM interface. The interactive dashboard provides rail companies with detailed breakdowns of the risk profile by location and operator.
Cost-benefit analysis
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a way to compare the costs and benefits of an intervention. Our guidance on CBA explains how it can be used to inform a safety-related decision. CBA can help build a business case. It can also be used to demonstrate compliance with the legal requirement to ensure safety so far as is reasonably practicable.
In the rail industry, safety benefits are incorporated into a CBA by multiplying the expected risk reduction by the value of preventing a fatality (VPF).
Move the sliders on either side of the scales to find where safety benefit outweighs costs.
Interactive example: managing risk during adverse weather
Some assets are more likely to fail and cause a derailment hazard during extreme weather. Slowing trains reduces derailment risk. However, it also causes delays and cancellations, which inconvenience customers and can result in financial penalties for operators.
Disruption has a knock-on safety impact, too. It can lead to crowding at stations, frustrated passengers, and changes to services . These in turn increase the risk from passenger accidents, staff assaults, and other safety incidents.
The graphic below shows these safety and performance impacts for a hypothetical railway with a line speed of 100 mph. You can investigate different combinations of weather and speed restriction to see how the balance of costs and benefits changes.
When would you apply a speed restriction and what speed limit would you choose? It is important to consider the overall impact on system risk.
Move the sliders below to choose a weather condition and propose a new speed.
