Role of supervision systems in railway safety
Résumé
New generation of supervision systems in industry can achieve operation from display process variables to all automated control where human is just monitoring automaton. In railway specific industry, supervision is organised in switching zones and aims to be centralised in an Integrated Control Centre. Such centres implements integrated and computer based systems that perform train protection, train operation and supervision. Thus railway dispatchers using supervision have their tasks considerably simplified. Although considered today as not safety critical, railway supervision systems can contribute to safety in some scenarios where an appropriate decision of a supervision operator could notably reduce the severity of accidents. That is in particular the case for residual scenarios (intervention of maintenance teams on the tracks, manual operation of trains not protected by train protection system, coupling / uncoupling, emergency requiring the stop and the evacuation of a train...) only covered by procedure, thus requiring a human intervention by a person supposed correctly informed on the state of the system, thanks to the data provided by the supervision system