A glance at transit system safety

Abstract

System safety is a discipline of applying engineering and management principles, criteria, and techniques to achieve acceptable or tolerable risk within the constraints of operational effectiveness, suitability, time, and cost throughout all phases of the system life. System safety engineering is the program to identify hazards, and to eliminate hazards or reduce the associated risks when the hazards cannot be eliminated. System safety management involves plans and activities taken to identify hazards; assess and mitigate associated risks; track, control, close, and document risks encountered in the design, development, test, manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and the disposal of systems, subsystems, and equipment. In this paper, the concept and principle of system safety in the transit system is discussed. The paper also introduces the safety standards, safety life-cycle, Safety Integrity Levels (SILs), safety analysis techniques and safety cases etc.