Despite tremendous progress in railroad safety over the last 30 years, many safety statistics have plateaued. Thus, additional insights on the complex interaction between people, trains, infrastructure, and the operating environment are needed. While the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requires railroad agencies to regularly report on key safety metrics, there is additional data that agencies collect, but rarely share. Following similar successful data sharing projects in the aviation and motor vehicle industries, this FRA project established a secure, data-sharing and analysis platform titled the Railroad Information Sharing Environment (RISE). The RISE pilot project demonstrated the ability for FRA, railroads, and a trusted third-party data steward to share and analyze safety-sensitive data to improve railroad safety. This report documents the effort, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations for building future phases of RISE as a data trust for the railroad industry.

See Also: 

• Lessons from the Railroad Information Sharing Environment (RISE) Pilot Project