Training of Resilience Skills for Safer Railways: Developing a New Training Program on the Basis of Lessons from Tsunami Disaster

Railway operators such as drivers, conductors, and station staff faced difficult situations related to the earthquake and tsunami disaster in 2011. They had to decide by themselves what to do with limited information and to act quickly. They nevertheless performed remarkably and saved many lives of passengers as well as their own lives. We interviewed 104 such operators and found that (1) imagination, (2) sensitivity to risk, and (3) decision-making abilities are the most important for front-end operators to overcome a crisis. In order to enhance these abilities, we started to develop a new training program based on a serious game, "Crossroad", that had been developed as a training tool to increase awareness of conflicts in the face of natural disasters. About 1500 railway practitioners from the East Japan Railway Company participated in experimental trials of the new training method. As expected, the program was found to be effective to enhance the ability of resilience, which would help front-end practitioners respond flexibly and adaptively to critical situations.