• Objective

Common Occurrence Reporting (COR) is a process and tool to harmonise the reporting of data on safety incidents on the rail network and the evaluation of that data on a national and European level. This data can be used to evaluate safety performance and to create models for risk assessment and predict safety threats. For urgent reporting, a “Safety Alert IT Tool” (SAIT) has been developed by the EU Agency for Railways (ERA).

• Involvement of Infrastructure Managers

The Infrastructure Managers (IMs) acknowledge the importance of its role in the railway sector, including reporting and using occurrence reporting with the aim to improve risk management and safety. Even though the most important use of occurrence reporting is done locally at each IM, the IMs acknowledge and support sharing of occurrence data across the railway actors of Europe. The existing legislation (Railway Safety Directive (EU) 2016/798, Common Safety Method , etc.) explicitly requires IMs to collect safety and evaluate occurrences in order to monitor and improve the safety-performance of their operations.

Opportunities
• COR provides a better link between different elements of the safety regulatory framework, especially regarding collecting, reporting and analyzing safety related data;
• COR contributes to a better understanding of risks and improved risk-based decision making.
• Taxonomy of occurrence data needs to be well-defined and its scope must be practicable;
• The identification of relevant legal implications is crucial to define tasks and responsibilities;
• The COR project does not receive adequate funding.

Challenges
• EIM is involved in the COR preparatory work in ERA and the relevant Working Party through its experts;
• EIM will scrutinize the tasks and responsibilities for IMs to be defined in the new CSM for its practical consequences and legal implications.