European practice of risk management implementation in the railway safety management system

The article analyzes the European experience of using risk management mechanisms in the field of railway traffic safety. The safety and reliability of the transportation process on the railways of the European Union Member States is guaranteed by the construction of effective traffic safety management systems based on risk management tools. In the European practice of railway safety management, risk management is a mandatory element of the Traffic Safety Management System. The main goal of the risk management system in the field of traffic safety is to reduce the existing risk levels to the established acceptable level and further maintain the achieved risk levels no higher than the established acceptable level. For this purpose, a set of risk management measures has been developed, which are implemented whenever changes in operating conditions or the appearance of new data give rise to new risks of transport accidents and events. The European Risk Management System is the starting point for the safety management of the railway systems of the European Union Member States, where risk management is carried out throughout the entire life cycle of the railway system, from the design stage to the completion of its operation. A common risk management system is applied in the railway transport of the European Union Member States, which is a quantitative risk assessment model based on hazardous event scenarios. This risk assessment model is based on observations in the form of cause-and-effect analysis using the Fault Tree Analysis and the Event Tree Analysis techniques to represent each hazardous event. The European risk assessment model is flexible and can be easily adapted to assess and monitor the security risk of other elements.