Abstract
According to European Directives, it would be necessary to develop freight interoperability, defined as crossing borders from one country to another without changing either locomotive or driving crew. This project is a challenge for the railway companies that control infrastructures and traffic. The interoperability implementation implies changes in work techniques, regulation and organisation, that may affect the reliability of the systems involved, giving rise to risky situations in terms of production, regularity and safety. The purpose of this paper is to describe a proactive ergonomic approach used for the integration of human factors and safety at the early stages of design for future interoperable situations. Ergonomic analysis has been oriented within a socio-technical frame where a workstation is viewed in its technical and organisational dimensions. Three methods have been used: observations in marshalling yards and driving cabin in other countries, staff interviews and analyses of incidents and hazards. Results formed the basis for developing “a methodological guide for integrating human factors”. In a more general way, some principles for an ecological design of a safe organisational system are provided in the last section of this paper.
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http://www.uic.asso.fr/
Besides the authors of this paper, A. Schmidt from the University of Berlin (Technische Universität Berlin) has participated to the work analysis of the German system and studied the Dresden–Lobovice service between Germany and the Czech Republic (cf. Interoperability Human Factor and Safety in European freight traffic. Interim report for the UIC, Berlin: Research Centre System Safety and Berlin University of Tehnology 2003).
Furthermore, a technical and regulatory analysis, by the UIC, was carried out on interoperability situations between Sweden and Norway, Sweden and Danemark, France and Great Britain, Belgium and surrounding countries in order to compare approaches and solutions adopted.
The aim of this method is to understand the emergency of accidental and incidental processes. The analysis involves four steps: (a) Construction of a framework description defining the invariant and attribute categories of the real work conditions. (b) Reconstitution of the critical event scenarios according to the framework. The scenario describes the history and the chronology of events and actions of actors involved at different organisational levels in the critical situation. (c) Identification of pivotal-points in each scenario. A pivotal-point is a disturbing element of the work process difficult or impossible to be controlled by the operator. Pivotal-points are defined a posteriori depending on their consequences on the situation dynamic. (d) Typological classification of the incident or accident patterns. It means to establish a typology of the incidental process describing sequences of events and actions.
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De la Garza, C., Weill-Fassina, A. & Kaplan, M. Integrating human factors in freight interoperability safety design. Cogn Tech Work 10, 61–68 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-007-0078-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-007-0078-8