Commission Decision of 5 June 2009 on the adoption of a common safety method for assessment of achievement of safety targets, as referred to in Article 6 of Directive 2004/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (notified under document number C(2009) 4246) (Text with EEA relevance) (2009/460/EC)

3. Framework model for the assessment of achievement of NRVs and CSTs

3.1. Methodology for assessing achievement of NRVs and CSTs

3.1.1. The following principles shall apply for assessing achievement of NRVs and CSTs:

(a)

for each Member State and for each of the risk categories whose respective NRV is equal to or lower than the corresponding CST, the achievement of the NRV will also automatically imply the achievement of the CST. The assessment of achievement of the NRV shall be carried out according to the procedure described in section 3.2 and the NRV shall represent the maximum tolerable level of the risk to which it refers, without prejudice to the provisions on the range of tolerance laid down in point 3.2.3;

(b)

for each Member State and for each of the risk categories whose respective NRV is higher than the corresponding CST, the CST shall represent the maximum tolerable level of the risk to which it refers. The assessment of achievement of the CST shall be carried out in compliance with the requirements deriving from the impact assessment and, where applicable, the timetable for gradual implementation of the CST, according to Article 7(3) of Directive 2004/49/EC.

3.1.2. For each Member State, and for each of the risk categories, the assessment of achievement of the NRV and CST shall be carried out annually by the Agency, taking into consideration the most recent four preceding reported years.

3.1.3. No later than 31 March each year the Agency shall report to the Commission on the overall results of the assessment of achievement of NRVs and CSTs.

3.1.4. Taking into account the provisions laid down in point 1.1.3, from 2012 onwards the assessment of achievement of the NRVs and CSTs shall be carried out annually by the Agency taking into consideration the most recent five preceding reported years.

3.1.5. The outcome of the assessment of achievement referred to in point 3.1.1 shall be classified as follows:

(a)

acceptable safety performance;

(b)

possible deterioration of safety performance;

(c)

probable deterioration of safety performance.

3.2. Stepwise description of the procedure referred to in point 3.1.1(a)

3.2.1. The procedure for the assessment of achievement of NRVs is composed of four different steps as described in the following points. The overall decisional flowchart of the procedure is shown in Appendix 2, where positive and negative decisional arrows correspond respectively to a ‘passed’ and a ‘failed’ result of the different assessment steps.

3.2.2. The first assessment step shall verify whether the observed safety performance is complying with the NRV or not. The observed safety performance shall be measured by using the measurement units listed in Appendix 1 and the data referred to in section 1.1, with time series which shall include the most recent years of observations as specified in section 3.1. The observed safety performance shall be expressed in terms of:

(a)

safety performance observed in the single most recent reported year;

(b)

moving weighted average (MWA), as specified in section 3.3.

The values returned by applying points (a) and (b) shall then be compared with the NRV, and if one of these values does not exceed the NRV the safety performance shall be considered acceptable. If this is not the case, the procedure shall continue with the second assessment step.

3.2.3. The second assessment step shall consider the safety performance as acceptable if the MWA does not exceed the NRV plus a 20 % range of tolerance. If this condition is not satisfied, the Agency shall ask the safety authority of the Member State concerned to provide the specifics of the single highest-consequence accident (in terms of FWSIs) in the most recent years of observation as referred to in section 3.1, excluding the years used to set the NRV.

If this single accident is more severe, in terms of consequences, than the most severe single accident included in the data used for setting the NRV, it shall be excluded from the statistics. The MWA is then recalculated to check whether it lies within the abovementioned range of tolerance. If this is the case, the safety performance shall be considered acceptable. If this is not the case, the procedure shall continue with the third assessment step.

3.2.4. The third assessment step shall verify whether it is the first time in the last 3 years that the second assessment step did not return evidence of acceptable safety performance. If this is the case, the outcome of the third assessment step shall be classified as ‘passed’. The procedure shall continue with the fourth step, whatever the outcome of the third step may be.

3.2.5. The fourth assessment step shall verify whether the number of significant accidents per train-km, with respect to the previous years, remained stable (or decreased). The criteria for this appraisal shall be whether there has been a statistically significant increase in the number of relevant significant accidents per train-km. This shall be evaluated by using an upper Poisson tolerance bound which will determine the acceptable variability based on the number of accidents that occurred in the different Member States.

If the number of significant accidents per train-km does not exceed the abovementioned tolerance bound, it is assumed that there has not been a statistically significant increase, and the outcome of this assessment step shall be classified as ‘passed’.

Depending on the risk category to which the different NRVs under assessment of achievement refer, the significant accidents to be considered for carrying out this assessment step are as follows:

(a)

risks to passengers: all relevant significant accidents;

(b)

risks to staff or employees, including the staff of contractors: all relevant significant accidents;

(c)

risks to level crossing users: all relevant significant accidents included in the category ‘accidents involving level crossings’;

(d)

risks to unauthorised persons on railway premises: all relevant significant accidents included in the category ‘accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion’;

(e)

risks to others: all relevant significant accidents;

(f)

risk to society as a whole: all significant accidents.

3.3. Moving weighted averaging process for the annual assessment of achievement of NRVs

3.3.1. For each Member State and for each of the risk categories to which the Moving Weighted Averaging (MWA) is applied for carrying out, in each year Y (starting from Y = 2010 onwards), the assessment steps described in section 3.2, the following phases shall be applied for calculating the MWA_Y:

(a)

calculation of the annual observations OBS _i returned by the corresponding indicators listed in Appendix 1, after providing as input the data available from the sources referred to in section 1.1 for the relevant years (the index i takes the values as defined in the formula below);

(b)

calculation of the arithmetic n-year average (AV) of annual observations OBS_i [initially n = 4; from 2012 onwards n = 5];

(c)

calculation of the absolute value of the difference ABSDIFF _i between each annual observation OBS_i and the AV. If ABSDIFF_i < 0,01 * AV, to ABSDIFF_i is attributed a constant value equal to 0,01 * AV;

(d)

calculation of the weight W_i , by taking the inverse of ABSDIFF_i ;

(e)

calculation of the MWA_Y as follows:

;

where i is a natural number and

if Y = 2010 or 2011: x = Y – 5; N = Y – 2 if Y ≥ 2012: x = Y – 6; N = Y – 2