Security in the Kings Cross Underground - Case Study Example

IMPORTANCE OF SAFETY PRECAUTIONS Student’s name Code & Course Professor’s name University City Date Kings Cross underground is a tunnel has five meeting lines which include metropolitan and circle, Risk assessment in a building is a process of identifying and evaluating the risks that relate to the hazard in a building as well as determining the appropriate means of controlling the hazard. Assessments are necessary because it enables someone to identify one that might be at risk particularly the employees and the public. Also, it creates awareness of the perils and determining whether the present control measures are enough. The primary aim of assessing risks in a working place is to reduce the level of risk by coming up with measures as required. Such actions create health working area (Boustras, G. and Rein, G., 2016). London king's cross train stations is a building I chose to carry out the risk assessment research. It is the largest and oldest railway station which started in 1852 along the northern edge of London. It provides quick access to different cities and also offers commuter services to Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Norfolk. It is a famous station since it led to the start of the east coast route to the north of England. The private part see serves London to the east Besides the main line at Kings Cross station, there are other underground stations such as St. Pancreas and king’s cross Midland city that offers commuter destinations across London and Bradford. (Angerville, R, and Gotze., 2009). Tick list A number of aspects need to be considered in identifying high/low risk areas associated with railways transportation which include but not limited to the following ticklist: Risk Cause 1.Derailment of Train 2.Fire Accident 3.Explosions 4. Collapse of Railway Tunnel From the tick list, it is evident that the investigation was the fire hazard on the king’s Cross train station in London where accidents have been challenging issue affecting the station operations. The sources of the fire outbreak mostly cannot be discovered quickly. Observation only indicates generality, until the investigation is carried out. In most cases, a fire in station is caused by the carelessness from the passengers and sometimes the crew overlooking minor issues in the train. From the analysis, it is noticed that the first fatal accident caused by the fire was due to smoking claims. The fire broke out at the station, but the working staff ignored the report from the passenger’s information (Lu, Li, and Xia., 2013) The people who are at risk mostly are the passengers and the staff members; therefore, precautions and measures are needed to prevent the fire hazard from affecting the operations and threaten people’s lives. The advantages of the precautions and actions taken by the authorities from investigators are that it enables the passengers to be aware of the fire risks in the station. It also encourages the crews to be ready anytime in combating fire and saves people’s life. The limitations are, the crew, working staff and passengers tend to overlook the some measures, for example, the smoking by the passengers to be prohibited in the stations. But you will find crew watch passengers smoking, and no action can take against them. Also, the authorities sometimes ignore the information from the passengers who are vital. Fire is dangerous, and it destroys properties and claims people’s lives (Lu, Li, and Xia., 2013) The risk matrix is probability tools that are used in assessing the level of a risk. It evaluates the widespread of the risk and determines the whether the risk is sufficient to control.it uses two dimensions where extreme scrutiny is done and possibility of the event occurring. The probability combination with severity gives the event chances on a risk matrix Matrices mostly cover three fields (Lu, Li, and Xia., 2013) The low probability with low severity fields shows that the risk is small, and it can be controlled. Therefore, no action can be taken. Bowties in risk matrices can be done only for major hazard. The high probability with high severity shows that the risks is high and cannot be controlled with ease unless active control measures are acquired. Bowties can have several events at a higher gravity. The medium category is between the high and low gravity. The events that fall into this category required monitoring but controlled as low as practicable which mean the risk is acceptable (Angerville, R., 2009) The risk matrix is a poor decision maker tool that best suits the ranking of events. The decision can only be acquired basing on the analysis that will tell the cause of the unwanted event and what an organization is working on to control the situation. The misconception about the risk matrix is that majority of the expert assume that it is a quantitative tool, it is only applicable in theory but real field, it is not. That’s why it difficult to assign any real numbers to a matrix. Severity is looking something critically from the human perspective or damage perspective to a facility. The four perspectives are people, environment, assets, and reputation. Any event can be judged against the category of events (Mavsar, Japelj, and Kovač, 2013). The probabilities are various when it to risk matrices depending on how often event might occur. It tells the events that have taken place. The probability says about both past and future event. The importance of risk matrices is that it predicts for us the future events and severe it will be. Such information enables someone to prepare themselves if worse is going to happen (Mavsar, Japelj, and Kovač, 2013). Methods used when assessing fire risk SWOT Analysis Strength Weaknesses i. London King’s cross is typified by effective OHS management systems that effectively addressed all issues pertaining to the health of workers and its customers. Evidently, following its fatal complacency accident of 1987, that saw 31 killed, the train service has since augmented its approaches to managing OHS. ii. Having robust risk assessment teams that are on the move on a 24 hour basis to resolve any conflict that may arise at any time. Such a team is an effective way of addressing issues that may arise due to faulty approaches to management of risks i. The Risk management systems need to be continuously updated, to cater for newer threats such as terrorists. This has been left out in the analysis of such aspects. Whereas terrorism cannot be argued as a major incident, its aftermath. i.e. bomb explosions can create major catastrophic issues. Opportunities Threat i. Create environmental management systems that can be well placed in addressing catastrophic events, such as Tsunami’s and Tornadoes, to name a few. ii. With its massive revenue share, the company should improve some of its old building design to adequately cater for changing consumer population and dynamics. Such designs could incorporate a possible enlargement of boarding areas among others. Heat resistant paints, for example should be encouraged following incidents that happened some centuries back. 1. Some incidences are beyond an effective planning of a risk management approach. Simply put, all aspects regarding Tsunami’s may at times present challenges in m mitigating. Foreseeing the potential hazard may be possible my mitigating such an incident in massive scales can be a challenge. BowTie Analysis The Bowtie Analysis below showcases the possible risks that can be realized in the London King’s Cross. The associated risks are linked from Track switch failure, collision and broken rails, as evidenced on the left hand side of the bow tie. It is evident that derailment is the major incident, characterized by various aspects. For instance broken rails, can be controlled by the creation of effective rail designs, track occupancy and ultrasonic testing to verify whether the integrity of the bars in the railway track. Contrariwise, Track switch failure is an eminent cause for derailment; where aspects of switch design, heating of switch and switch control systems must be checked. On the right hand side, counter measures such as persons/passenger health, hazardous substance and bad publicity are effectively crafted in mitigation the occurrence of such a problem. FMEA Analysis Railway tracks can be essentially grouped into two major groups notably; i. Deformation from Geometry; characterized by events caused by deformation from supporting components of tracks such as subgrade, ties and ballast. ii. Mechanical failures which arise as the result of degradation by wear and tear, among others. No Description Cause Effects of Failures Detection of Failure Maintenance Strategy Rail 1.1 Rail Corrugation Inconsistency traffic speeds, axle loads, and plastic flow of materials Degradation of rail components such as rail pads, bolt holes and welds Laser, visual Grinding of the rails to improve profiles Squat Defects High load dynamic Failure of Rail Inspection, ultrasonic , visual Preventive rail grinding, Tache Ovale Increased hydrogen in rail steel and welds Increased cost of maintenance and rail failure Inspection, eddy currents Increased quality of welds and manufacturing Sleepers Concrete Spalling Rusted reinforcing Increased maintenance Cost Visual Inspection Corrective repair Cracks Shearing at the top, cracks due to tamping machines, ballast pollution, increased loading Failure derailment, structural integrity compromised Visual inspection Replacement maintenance Rail Seat Rail Seat abrasion , chemical deterioration, traffic car vature Increased maintenance Cost, derailment Machine vision Replacements Ballast Ballast Fouling Contamination realized by fine grained aggregates, rust Ballast deformation Ground penetration radar Bio remediation RISK Ranking Risk priority ranking is especially used in the prioritizing components that necessitate for the greater considerations. The Tables below showcase London Crossing ranks for the defective failures of events between 2012-2013. Defective rails showcased the highest scores, which were successes by defective block joints, which were the highest priority for maintenance. Simply put; Risk Priority number: Occurrence × Severity × Detection Failure Events O D S RPN RPN Priority Ranking Defective Perway Fastening 2 8 9 144 7 Derailment 1 7 10 70 8 Defectuve Block Joint 4 8 9 288 2 Ontrack Welding 2 7 4 56 9 Obstructions 5 8 7 280 3 Calls Perway Personnel 5 5 6 5150 6 No Operations 9 5 6 270 4 Sub Standard Geometry 3 8 9 216 5 Skidmarks 1 7 10 70 8 Fault Tree The primary functions of the kings cross train station are to prevent the train outside the control system of the train under the safe speed and distance. The Executable indices of the train such as delays and transmission error inconsiderable as they do not have anything to do with the safety of the train as well as the harm caused by equipment failure outside the control system of the train also cannot be considered, and there is no maintenance online during operation. The tree structure of the kings cross train station is established with the perspectives of the safety function. The basic steps of the fault tree model are failure to be selected for the top event of the fault tree, and then the perfect fault tree is created from the top to the bottom following the logical functional relationship of every event. It is noted that the fault tree is a concept of a functional structure of the kings cross train station where the cells are the bottom events with redundancy configuration containing several devices that can be handled as a whole when establishing the process of the fault tree. FishBone Analysis From the research, it is noticed that railway is unreliable for safety because of several factors. Such factors include poor designing of the component. Some train components are made from the wrong materials that can easily break when overheated or overloaded while other materials have wrong dimensions where the designer design materials that cannot fit the railway or the train hence such carelessness results to the accident. Most artists produce a component that is counterfeit, and even some do not follow the production procedure. Secondly, incorrect manufacturing of the products trains products. Some manufacturing companies produce train product using the outdated technology and old machines. By using the outdated technology to manufacture products, results to poor products that are unreliable to use. The fake products always cause a fatal accident. Also, some manufacturers fail to control process hence the production process drops from time to time. Such reduction results in poor products. Some organizations lack calibrated instruments to be used to test if the product quality and fit for safety use. There is an improper maintenance of the train and its track. Most of the train components are checked regularly which weakens the hinges and bolts of the train. In addition, the method used to maintain he product is not recommendable hence unreliable for kings cross train station. Reliability Block Diagram The RBD for trains are considered to the have three MCs, hence it can be viewed that more redundancy is realized in the configuration of a single MC. Evidently, the vacuum, power generation and compressed air systems can be described as k-out-of-n systems, in the case where two o Cost Benefit Analysis The application of reduction risk measures to accident contributors has different impacts on the risk mitigation accident, for instance, the overlapping extension application. Such application is used to reduce the contribution actually to collision among the trains such as kings cross train which compromises the overlap, low friction of the rail wheel, erratic direction movements, failure of emergency braking, and over speeding. The extension overlap also has variations in the intensity of the risk reduction given to various collision contributors among the trains and, therefore, it is cost efficient in some scenarios. The illustration of the risk mitigation reliability considers sets of risks that address the researched incidents which can lead to a collision of the trains. Such collections include automatic train operation. By using the automatic train, process contributes significantly to the safety of the passengers in kings cross train station which controls the train by giving out signals in case of any breakage or the train operator related failures. It is also important to overlap train extensions. The overlapping enables the train component to last long and cannot wear out at ease hence increases the reliability of the train. Also, it is vital to implement the speed restrictions which curbs the issues related to the train accident. Optimum Budget Allocation analysis The concept of removed risk amount by reduction option is a problem of optimal allocation of budget fixed among the specific number of reduction risk option in the king cross train stations can reduce an optimization problem from a dynamic program. The active program techniques are used in the risk mitigation in kings cross train station. Risk reduction option n and available risk budget reduction B and the running time of the proposed algorithm is 0(n*(B+1). The proposed method is an efficient tool for solving risk optimal reduction problem in the kings cross train station. The solution of the optimal has relatively high number of option which brings solution within the shortest time possible using the developed software that is efficient in a decision support tool for the kings cross train station. The thesis for solving optimal budget allocation issues which promote the reduction of risks are presented by i. Maximum risk reduction problem definition ii. Application of the dynamic program method to a known number test to validated the model cases. The maximum reduction risk problem has scientific illustrations that are presented. Optimal vector, X*={X1,X2,…,Xn} Where B is the available budget, which optimizes the risk reduction within a budget that is fixed. Conclusion It is more than a century, London Underground has been operating safely and has a good record of traveling safely underground compared to other underground stations. But fire is something inevitable in the underground tunnels, particularly on a wooden escalator. In my opinion, it would be better for an underground train to come up with detectors that sense the element of fire. During the investigation, individuals gave out their suggestions, but I chose now to give my view of the underground train line, I began by honoring those who died heroic in an attempt to rescue other people’s life hence it is advisable to have courage when dealing with emergencies. (Angerville, R., 2009) The injured people did not actively participated in the investigation with any genuine reasons; remember they are the one who could have supported the research by responding to questions The study took long over deeply researching terrible disaster which claimed several lives and many more were injured. Some number of interviewed felt hurt by the several questions I asked pertain the terrible night. I managed to conclude the by believing that such accident will never occur soon if they implement the measures of safety and passengers to know that, they are the priority Reference list Angerville, R., 2009. Ecotoxicological risk assessment related to the discharge of urban wet weather effluent (UWWE) in the streams: case study for a French city and an Haitian city (Doctoral dissertation, Ph. D. Thesis, INSA of Lyon and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Lyon). Boustras, G. and Rein, G., 2016. Special Issue in Fire Hazards in Energy Systems. Fire Technology, 52(2), pp.285-287. Cardis, E., Vrijheid, M., Blettner, M., Gilbert, E., Hakama, M., Hill, C., Howe, G., Kaldor, J., Muirhead, C.R., Schubauer-Berigan, M. and Yoshimura, T., 2007. The 15-Country Collaborative Study of Cancer Risk among Radiation Workers in the Nuclear Industry: estimates of radiation-related cancer risks. Radiation research, 167(4), pp.396-416. Chowdhury, R. and Flentje, P., 2003. Role of slope reliability analysis in landslide risk Covello, V.T. and Merkhoher, M.W., 2013. Risk assessment methods: approaches for assessing health and environmental risks. Springer Science & Business Media. Fedo, J., 2014. Nurses' Decision Making and Pain Management Outcomes. Goldarag, Y.J., Mohammadzadeh, A. and Ardakani, A.S., 2016. Fire Risk Assessment Using Neural Network and Logistic Regression. Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, pp.1-10. Hou, Y.S., Li, Y.F. and Zhang, C., 2016. Influence of Train Location on Smoke Control in Tunnel Cross-passage. Procedia Engineering, 135, pp.566-572. Jourdan, S.Z., 2010. An investigation of organizational information security risk analysis (Doctoral dissertation, Auburn University). Lu, Y., Li, Q. and Xiao, W., 2013. Case-based reasoning for automated safety risk analysis on subway operation: Case representation and retrieval. Safety science, 57, pp.75-81. management. Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment, 62(1), pp.41-46. Mavsar, R., Japelj, A. and Kovač, M., 2013. Trade-offs between fire prevention and provision of ecosystem services in Slovenia. Forest Policy and Economics, 29, pp.62-69. Read More

The misconception about the risk matrix is that majority of the expert assume that it is a quantitative tool, it is only applicable in theory but real field, it is not. That’s why it difficult to assign any real numbers to a matrix. Severity is looking something critically from the human perspective or damage perspective to a facility. The four perspectives are people, environment, assets, and reputation. Any event can be judged against the category of events (Mavsar, Japelj, and Kovač, 2013).

The probabilities are various when it to risk matrices depending on how often event might occur. It tells the events that have taken place. The probability says about both past and future event. The importance of risk matrices is that it predicts for us the future events and severe it will be. Such information enables someone to prepare themselves if worse is going to happen (Mavsar, Japelj, and Kovač, 2013). Methods used when assessing fire risk SWOT Analysis Strength Weaknesses i. London King’s cross is typified by effective OHS management systems that effectively addressed all issues pertaining to the health of workers and its customers.

Evidently, following its fatal complacency accident of 1987, that saw 31 killed, the train service has since augmented its approaches to managing OHS. ii. Having robust risk assessment teams that are on the move on a 24 hour basis to resolve any conflict that may arise at any time. Such a team is an effective way of addressing issues that may arise due to faulty approaches to management of risks i. The Risk management systems need to be continuously updated, to cater for newer threats such as terrorists.

This has been left out in the analysis of such aspects. Whereas terrorism cannot be argued as a major incident, its aftermath. i.e. bomb explosions can create major catastrophic issues. Opportunities Threat i. Create environmental management systems that can be well placed in addressing catastrophic events, such as Tsunami’s and Tornadoes, to name a few. ii. With its massive revenue share, the company should improve some of its old building design to adequately cater for changing consumer population and dynamics.

Such designs could incorporate a possible enlargement of boarding areas among others. Heat resistant paints, for example should be encouraged following incidents that happened some centuries back. 1. Some incidences are beyond an effective planning of a risk management approach. Simply put, all aspects regarding Tsunami’s may at times present challenges in m mitigating. Foreseeing the potential hazard may be possible my mitigating such an incident in massive scales can be a challenge. BowTie Analysis The Bowtie Analysis below showcases the possible risks that can be realized in the London King’s Cross.

The associated risks are linked from Track switch failure, collision and broken rails, as evidenced on the left hand side of the bow tie. It is evident that derailment is the major incident, characterized by various aspects. For instance broken rails, can be controlled by the creation of effective rail designs, track occupancy and ultrasonic testing to verify whether the integrity of the bars in the railway track. Contrariwise, Track switch failure is an eminent cause for derailment; where aspects of switch design, heating of switch and switch control systems must be checked.

On the right hand side, counter measures such as persons/passenger health, hazardous substance and bad publicity are effectively crafted in mitigation the occurrence of such a problem. FMEA Analysis Railway tracks can be essentially grouped into two major groups notably; i. Deformation from Geometry; characterized by events caused by deformation from supporting components of tracks such as subgrade, ties and ballast. ii. Mechanical failures which arise as the result of degradation by wear and tear, among others.

No Description Cause Effects of Failures Detection of Failure Maintenance Strategy Rail 1.

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