The 55th ESReDA Seminar took place in Bucharest, Romania, 9-10 October 2018, hosted by the Romanian Railway Investigating Agency (AGIFER).
This seminar was opened by Mr. Luís Andrade Ferreira, ESReDA president and Vasile Belibou, the AGIFER General Manager. For the first time for ESReDA, the State Secretary in the Ministry of Transports, Mr. Călin Cristian Forț, introduced on Romanian Railways evolutions.
The programme proposed 22 papers within 7 sessions: “Past, present, future”; “Organizations and human aspects”; “Methodological aspects”; “Lessons learned and historical perspectives”; “Methods”; “Case studies” and “Going across sectors”. About 80 participants from 15 countries (France, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, The Netherlands, Finland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Sweden, United Kingdom, Israel and Romania) contributed through their presentations, discussions and expertise in establishing the state-of-the-art in the field.
The technical programme included three keynote lectures: from Dan Serbanescu from Romanian Academy of science, about “Similitudes and interconnections in accidents investigation and learning processes in various lifecycle phases and socio political environments for systems using different technologies“; from Teodor Gradinariu, Senior Technical Advisor, at International Union of Railways, France that addressed “Cyber security in railways, threats and challenges” (results of UIC project ARGUS). In addition, the seminar had the privilege to listen to Mr. Raed Arafat, State Secretary at Romanian Internal Affairs Ministry, who explained how he challenged the emergency situations management for the Bucharest metro network with a public and private interface.
For the first time in an ESReDA seminar, the Technical Program Committee (TPC) organized one hour workshop “Debate about the Remaining Challenges of Accident Investigation and Potential Innovative Breakthroughs” (9th October 2018) to increase the Experts debate time which is the essence of ESReDA community. The participants were divided (by the TPC) into 8 groups (4 in English language, 4 in Romanian language) and they had to identify problems and solutions regarding the four phases of accident investigation (organizational issues, fact-finding, analysis/recommendations, follow up). The results and ideas were presented within a reflection session to all participants the second day.
The final proceedings of the 55th ESReDA Seminar are already available (click to download pdf) for public consultation and free downloading in compliance with ESReDA politics of free dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge.
Full programme of the 55th ESReDA Seminar is available at ESReDA website. Few photos of the seminar were captured and now being displayed in the Gallery section of the website.