Benchmarking risk management indices of the railway industry

The use of Risk Management Indices (RMI) drives an organisation to develop models that address system failures and consequences systematically. The RMI are criteria which help to reach safety decisions that are likely to be supported and implemented since it is possible to deal with risk and uncertainty in a more efficient, consistent and demonstrable way. The various RMI used by industry include Risk Acceptance Criteria, Equivalent Fatality and Value of Preventing a Fatality. This paper discusses the results of the study and the analyses of the data obtained from the risk management indices survey carried out worldwide. The approach to data collection was based on literature survey and Internet searches. The analysis of the survey results was carried out by normalising the indices of different organisations and risk acceptance criteria were compared against past performance and background risk trends. The study makes recommendations on developing risk acceptance criteria and other indices and highlights the difficulties in undertaking the benchmarking exercise because of differences of recording processes and systems, the definition of risk management indices and the risk aversion factors used in different countries.