System Theory-based Common Causation Analysis Of Multiple Accidents On The Railway System

As one of the most common land transportation, railway plays a major role in themodern transport system with the characteristic of large freight volume, low operation cost,fast speed and less energy consumption. Along with the rapid development of economy inChina, the train speeded up6times. The increase of train speed makes it stricter for therailway system safe operation. Especially many serious railway accidents happened inChina in recent years, which not only caused heavy personnel and property losses, but alsoseriously affected the reputation of Chinese railway. The comprehensive analysis of theaccidents and targeted protection and improvement measures are important to improve thesafety of the railway system and prevent similar accidents happening in the future.The accident cause analysis which contributes to illustrate the relationship of thecause and the effect, and explain why the accident happened, is an important basis toprevent the similar accidents. System theory treats the object of research as a whole,analyzes the structure and function of the object, and studies the relationship among object,elements and environment and the change rules. As an interdisciplinary and multi-fieldscience, system theory is widely used in industrial engineering, scientific research,education, economy, health, military and administrative aspects. Utilizing the systemtheory and methods in railway accidents analysis could give a description of movementand interconnection among inner elements of railway system, which provides a systemview and seizes the complexity and dynamics of the whole system to comprehensivelyanalyze and understand accidents.In this paper, system theory method is applied to analyze the China railway accidents,and seek out the root cause of the accidents. The STEP-STAMP method can help realizethe control mechanism and the complex interactions within the system, and find the realcause of accidents. System theory-based common causation analysis of multiple accidentsapproach is able to help find the common vulnerable spot, and take some improvementmeasures to avoid multiple accidents at the same time. The paper is organized as follows:Section1introduces the research background and significance, and review the formerresearch. In Section2, the STEP-STAMP method and system theory-based common causation analysis of multiple accidents approach has been proposed. Then, the Wenzhoutrain collision accident has been analyzed as an example to verify the effectiveness of theproposed method in Section3. In Section4, the Wenzhou train collision accident and theZibo train collision accident have been discussed as an example to analyze the commoncausation. Finally, what we get in this paper is summarized, and the future work isproposed in Section5.