A STUDY ON A RISK ASSESSMENT METHOD TO EVALUATE SMALL-SCALE SEDIMENT INFLOWS ON RAILROAD TRACKS

Abstract

 Sediment inflows originating from mountain streams have caused railway disaster. In the past, there had been accidents where trains ran over some sand formations and were derailed. It takes a lot of time to evaluate risks posed by mountain streams, because there are a huge number of mountain streams along the railway, and those basin areas are outside the railway sites. And, there is a possibility that variations in investigators’ evaluations are possible because mountain streams are influenced by various factors, such as topography and devastation condition of the riverbed or the riverside slope. Therefore, creating a method that can efficiently and effectively evaluate the risks posed by mountain streams to railways has become an important task. This paper proposes a method for evaluating the risk of small sediment inflows from mountain streams in the vicinity of railways, using data gathered from simple surveys. Specifically, it shows a scoring table for evaluating the risks posed by mountain streams. The table was created using statistical analysis based on data involving disaster and non-disaster mountain streams.