FRA Publishes Scenario-Based Training, Drone Inspection Studies

Written by Kyra Senese, Managing Editor
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FRA

The Federal Railroad Administration recently issued two new documents on scenario-based training and drone bridge inspection.

The first document, a technical report, examines the application of SBT for railroad transportation employees. The report’s goal was to see if using SBT would enhance learning capabilities around safety-critical behaviors, the ASLRRA reported.

The evaluation of both new and veteran employees revealed that while experienced employees showed no significant improvement in performance on training evaluation forms, new employees showed a statistically significant improvement of just under 17 percent from pre to post testing, the report said. 

This finding implies that SBT can assist new employees in learning about real-world scenarios that they may not encounter during standard training, officials said.

The second document, a research results publication, outlines a project by the University of South Carolina to use a new unmanned aircraft system—or drone—to carry out structural inspections on a CSX railroad bridge.

The USC team used a stereo digital image correlation system to make non-contact measurements of infrastructure deformation and stress with and without train loads. The results show that the StereoDIC system has the potential to be useful for inspecting railroad bridges and other structures, but more work is needed to improve the system and overall inspection accuracy, according to the ASLRRA.

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