Leading rail safety expert joins Institute of Railway Research
Research at the University of Huddersfield aims to ensure that modern rail travel is fast, efficient, technically advanced and safe.
Fri, 16 Jan 2015 12:13:00 GMT
Dr Coen Van Gulijk will head a rail safety and risk research programme vital to the strategic partnership formed between the IRR and RSSB
RESEARCH at the University of Huddersfield aims to ensure that modern rail travel is fast, efficient, technically advanced and safe at a time when passenger numbers in the UK are increasing.
The University’s Institute of Railway Research (IRR) has recruited a leading European specialist in the science of safety. Dr Coen Van Gulijk (pictured left) who has held key academic posts in his native Netherlands, has taken up his post as the IRR’s Reader in Railway Safety. He will head a rail safety and risk research programme that is a vital element in the strategic partnership formed between the IRR and RSSB (Rail Safety and Standards Board).
Dr Van Gulijk – who has a background in engineering – will use cutting-edge ‘Big Data’ techniques to gather and analyse massive amounts of information about potential rail risks. The aim is to provide the railway industry with digital tools that will grant rapid and cost- effective access to the information it needs to ensure that operations are safe.
Also, says Dr Van Gulijk, his research could help to speed up the adoption of new rail technologies.
“Because of the very stringent safety requirements in railways, it can be difficult to introduce new technology,” he said. “Railways are traditionally conservative, which is not a bad thing, because you want to use equipment that you are sure of.”
Now it hoped that the process of demonstrating the safety and reliability of a new technology can be streamlined as a result of the IRR’s work.
RSSB already maintains a Safety Risk Model that the rail industry uses to monitor risk and support decision making. The research taking place at the University of Huddersfield, headed by Dr Van Gulijk, aims to improve the industry’s risk modelling capability to further “support efficient safety decision making and thereby add value to the railway industry and society as a whole”.
Focussed research
Before his arrival at the University of Huddersfield, Dr Van Gulijk was an Assistant Professor in safety science at the Delft University of Technology. His early academic training was in chemical engineering and his PhD research dealt with diesel exhaust emissions.
At the Dutch scientific research organisation TNO he worked on the improvement of gas masks for military use and this helped to take him away from engineering to the safety sciences, an academic discipline that gathered pace in Europe in the 1980s, although it has roots in workplace safety issues of the early 1900s.
“It is a very broad area,” said Dr Van Gulijk. “Safety science is multi-disciplinary by definition and includes fields such as chemical safety, security and transport safety.”
But after working on very broad areas at Delft University of Technology, he decided that he wanted to return to more focussed research. The University of Huddersfield’s IRR has provided him with the opportunity for this and also to return to the field of engineering.
The Director of the Institute for Railway Research, Professor Simon Iwnicki said: “I am delighted that Dr Van Gulijk has joined us. Through his industrial and academic experience he brings an important extra dimension to our expertise and capabilities.”
