Project B2: Understanding and Integration of Human Factors across the Railway Network

1. Whole System Performance Project B2: Understanding and Integration of Human Factors across the Railway Network Researchers: Prof. John Wilson, Trudi Farrington-Darby, Prof. Bob Hockey & Richard Bye. Partners: University of Nottingham & University of Sheffield Background: B2 was a one-year scoping project designed to provide an overview of current research on human factors (HF) within the rail industry and an evaluation of the applications of HF knowledge. The emphasis of the project was on the collation and evaluation of existing HF research and its integration into industry practice. Findings: B2 focused on a selection of research themes (see Figure 1) and demonstrated some benefits of transferring HF theory, methods and technology between rail and other domains. It was posited that current efforts to integrate and coordinate international research programmes should be continued to extend and enhance the rail HF knowledge base. Future work should engender a fusion of research and practice to support HFI in contemporary and future rail operations. • Novel Aspects: • There has been a considerable level of HF research activity in rail over the last 20 years. At the same time the need for HF integration in many aspects of the railway’s industry’s functioning has been recognised. • B2 is novel in that it is an attempt to assemble the existing research in parallel with a systems-level evaluation of the requirements for integrating HF in the rail industry. • The approach involved working with members of the HF rail community including RSSB, Network Rail, HF consultants and HF researchers. • Approach: • Review of UK and worldwide HF literature in rail and in related domains including aviation, road transport and process control. • Investigation of systems and practices in rail HF integration (HFI) and comparison with approaches in other sectors. • Hosting of the 1st European Conference for Rail Human Factors – a forum for sharing recent rail investigations. Figure 1. Rail HF Research Themes Outputs: B2 is now complete and the executive and technical reports are available on the RRUK website. Major papers from the 1st rail HF conference are included in Rail Human Factors: Supporting the Integrated Railway, recently published by Ashgate. Contact: trudi.farrington-darby@nottingham.ac.ukr.bye@sheffield.ac.uk