Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
From the perspective of the railway community, the revision of these stan-
dards must reflect the European safety activities currently undertaken by
non-standardisation bodies, one of which is ERA. For this reason, the new
standards should provide to the users clear links with ERA's railway safety
orientated perspective and activities.
Unlike the CSM on risk assessment, which is a mandatory element for the
EU Member States, the compliance with the CLC standards is not manda-
tory. Nevertheless, they focus on the technical process and outcome in con-
nection with the safety assurance of products and systems both across the EU
and beyond. They are going to reflect among others also the risk acceptance
principles and criteria, which are currently being developed as a part of the
upcoming revision of the CSM Regulation.
The CENELEC standards and the EU regulations are complementary
and collectively address broader aspects of safety assurance across the EU.
Therefore, having recognised all these aspects of the current developments of
both CENELEC and the ERA, a common active coordination activity has
been set up between them. Its aim is to align the EN standards with the
activities of the Agency and especially with the CSM on risk assessment and
its revision, and to provide further a sound and safe basis for the European
railways.
3
Conclusions and outlook
Shortly after the publication of the CSM Regulation in April 2009, the Euro-
pean Railway Agency has started a series of activities for its dissemination.
The first step in the CSM dissemination was represented by a series of
workshops, which the Agency has held for all concerned railway actors around
Europe. During them and with the support of the associated CSM guides [8],
[9], the requirements of the CSM Regulation have been explained further and
in more details.
With the support of railway sector organisations and national safety au-
thorities, the Agency is going to continue the dissemination activity with the
review of the feedback based on real case examples of changes to the rail-
way system whereby the CSM process has been applied. Among others, this
should allow to learn from different actors more about the gained experience
and the encountered diculties by the application of the CSM. In this way,
these could be taken into account for the future revision of the CSM.
During the dissemination workshops, series of questions have been raised.
Most of them were reflecting diculties, which arise from the particular legal
framework of the different Member States and are therefore not proper for a
publication in a generalised paper. Nevertheless, there were also questions at a
higher level, which have been asked repeatedly and whereby more guidance is
necessary. Some of them have been summarised in the sections above. Others,
like for example the questions, which consider the Independent Assessment
Body for the application of the CSM process, and the questions about the
