Trends in Enhancement of Safety Aspects of Existing Railway Infrastructure

Since more than 95% of the existing European railway network is older than 100 years, the ageing has unavoidably caused its gradual degradation and there is currently a strong need for risk assessment associated with this type of infrastructure. To increase the safety aspects, as well as to reduce the cost of remediation, railway infrastructure managers need to have more advanced tools on their disposal, since they currently make safety critical investment decisions based on poor data and an over-reliance on visual assessment. As a consequence their estimates of risk are therefore highly questionable and largescale failures happen with increasing regularity. The paper presents the efforts conducted within the framework of some relevant scientific-research projects funded by the Horizon 2020 programme, whose overall goal is to implement and to further develop state-of-the-art techniques and tools in field of railway infrastructure safety.