The First RESTRAIL Info Day was held in Paris on 13 June 2012.
Around 50 participants attended this meeting. The objective was to provide the members of the project’s advisory group with RESTRAIL’s preliminary results.
After a general presentation by Jacques Colliard from UIC, the project coordinator, Anne Silla from VTT in Finland presented the first results of the data analysis on suicide and trespass on railways properties. Then Maria Hedqvist from Trafikverket in Sweden presented the methodology developed for the assessment of the measures to prevent trespass and suicide. Gilad Rafaeli from MTRS3 in Israel and Hannan Saltzman from NICE in Israel presented information system solutions to better manage the consequences of these accidents and especially to reduce the shut down time that these accidents lead to.
It was also the opportunity to obtain information from some members of the advisory board who presented their work related to trespass and suicide. Aleksandra Perkuszewska from ERA (European Rail Agency) underlined ERA’s keen interest in RESTRAIL’s results. John Laene from RAIPOL presented the Network of RAILway POLice organisations which is very keen on exchanging knowledge and best practice to improve cooperation between railway and police for the prevention and mitigation of consequences of suicide and trespass. Then Chandra Shekkar Ray from the Railway Protection force in India presented the various measures that have been implemented to prevent these accidents which are a main issue in India. It was also very interesting to learn more about all the work focussed on prevention and postvention which are undertaken in the UK by the Samaritans organisation represented by Sophie Lapham, in partnership with Network Rail, represented by Mike Carr.
Lastly, Ulrich Hegerl from the University of Leipzig presented the results of the European Commission funded project OSPI, whose goal is to provide EU members with an evidence-based prevention concept for suicidality. He gave an outlook of cooperation with Deutsche Bahn on programmes targeting depression within the company, cooperation to prevent railway suicides e.g. to prevent the “Werther” effect and provide support for regional alliances against depression.
To conclude this meeting, several ways of sharing best practice and knowledge with the advisory group during the of the project’s whole lifecycle were proposed: workshops, questionnaires, sharing of documents in the RESTRAIL private workspace and regular information through newsletters and conferences.
The involvement of the advisory board, which is composed of a wide range of relevant professional expert knowledge in the areas of human science and health, law enforcement, education and social services, rail, is an essential feature of RESTRAIL in order to ensure that the project output is both well informed and of practical use to all who can be involved in the subject of suicide and trespass.
For further information on the RESTRAIL project, please consult the website: www.restrail.eu
All the presentations given are available in the RESTRAIL private workspace at
