The toy train is a lot of fun for children and it decorates our Christmas tree at home. However, as many users complain, toy trains may be derailed and damaged by running too fast at the bend or hitting an obstacle on track, which creates inconvenience and even money loss for toy train users [1]. Therefore, we want to design a safety control system able to detect the bend and the hazard obstacl...

Broken rails are the most frequent cause of freight-train derailments in the United States. Consequently, reducing their occurrence is a high priority for the rail industry and the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration. Current practice is to periodically inspect rails to detect defects using nondestructive technology such as ultrasonic inspection. Determining the optimal rail inspection frequen...

This disaster complexity case study examines Spain's deadliest train derailment that occurred on July 24, 2013 on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. Train derailments are typically survivable. However, in this case, human error was a primary factor as the train driver powered the Alvia train into a left curve at more than twice the posted speed. All 13 cars came off the ra...

The functional and structural integrity of the brain requires local adjustment of blood flow and regulated delivery of metabolic substrates to meet the metabolic demands imposed by neuronal activation. This process-neurovascular coupling-and ensued alterations of glucose and oxygen metabolism-neurometabolic coupling-are accomplished by concerted communication between neural and vascular cells. ...

The paper presents a tool-supported approach to graphically editing scheme plans and their safety verification. The graphical tool is based on a Domain Specific Language which is used as the basis for transformation to a CSP‖B formal model of a scheme plan. The models produced utilise a variety of abstraction techniques that make the analysis of large scale plans feasible. The techniques are ap...

There are many instances in which it is possible to plan ahead for an emergency evacuation (e.g., an explosion at a chemical processing facility). For those cases, if an accident (or an attack) were to happen, then the best evacuation plan for the prevailing network and weather conditions would be deployed. In other cases (e.g., the derailment of a train transporting hazardous materials), there...