Human factors in railway operations

Human factors is the application of knowledge of human capabilities and limitations to the design and management of the tasks that people do. The goals are to improve safety, reliability and efficiency through the avoidance of human error and improve the working conditions of staff in the process. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the area of human factors within railway operations. In the UK, this was in part due to the Ladbrooke Grove incident, while in Australia the Waterfall incident led to the implementation of human factors initiatives. As a result of these incidents, there has been an increase in railway human factors research. The introduction of requirements in legislation in the UK to address human factors issues has encouraged the development of tools to help organisations identify and manage human factors issues that contribute to human error in railway operations. Lloyd's Register Rail (Asia) have been working with the MTR Corporation to introduce the principles of human factors and begin to integrate them into the existing organisational processes. This paper presents a brief introduction to the field of human factors and its application to Railways in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong.