Business Intelligence Analytics

A Visual-Analytics System for

Railway Safety Management
Wallace P. Lira, Ronnie Alves, Jean M.R. Costa, Gustavo Pessin, Lilyan Galvão,
Ana C. Cardoso, and Cleidson R.B. de Souza ■ Vale Institute of Technology

T he working environment of railways is

challenging and complex and often has
employees performing high-risk operations.
Furthermore, because railway lines cover long dis-
tances, they pose risks to the many people living
is, both social and technical factors can influ-
ence railway operational safety. (Examples of so-
cial factors are the behaviors of train passengers
and of unauthorized people who trespass on the
tracks.1) So, the engineers asked us to enhance
alongside them. So, rail companies proactively our results with a visualization of socioeconomic
adopt strategies to minimize risk to their employ- factors related to the towns and cities along the
ees and the public. These strategies involve trained railway lines. They argued that this would let them
safety personnel, advanced forms of technology identify patterns, acquire valuable knowledge, and
(for example, radio and cam- make decisions about different scenarios. In other
eras), and special work processes words, they wanted a visual-analytics (VA) system.
Using a data analytics
and practices. Nevertheless, in- VA is “the science of analytical reasoning sup-
workflow, this system compiles cidents still occur. ported by interactive visual interfaces.”2 VA tech-
an incident risk index that Hisaji Fukuda suggested that niques can be used to make sense of large-scale,
processes information about to avoid railway incidents, it’s es- complex, ambiguous, and often conflicting data.
incidents along railway sential to systematically collect The VA system we created uses machine learning
lines. It displays the index information related to failures to compute the risk index. This index is accompa-
on a geographical map, and problems, predict the likeli- nied by geographic information (maps) represent-
together with socioeconomic hood of accidents, and propose ing the locations of towns and cities along the
information about the countermeasures.1 Vale, a multi- railways, together with relevant socioeconomic
associated towns and cities. national mining corporation and information. We designed the system to effectively
one of the largest logistics opera- formulate ideas about the relationship between
tors in Brazil, is implementing this strategy. Vale the socioeconomic data and incident occurrences.
takes steps to ensure that railway incident data are Furthermore, users should be able to employ the
collected, stored, and then analyzed by safety engi- system to support policies aimed at reducing the
neers, who subsequently can address the problem number of incidents at a particular location.
of improving operational safety.
We examined the data in Vale’s incident data- The Classification Model
base to find patterns of safety incidents that would Railway incidents have a huge social and economic
help us classify those incidents. On the basis of impact on society and railway companies. One of
this knowledge, we established an incident risk in- the most serious types of incidents is run-overs.
dex, which we believe could help improve manage- They have many causes, including wear and tear,
ment of safety policies. malfunctioning equipment, pedestrians’ failure
When the safety engineers saw our results, they to heed warning signals, insufficient information
told us that this issue was sociotechnical. That to allow the public to be aware of the risks, and

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 railway personnel’s failure to comply with safety
regulations.
So, what are the odds of predicting railway ac-
cidents? We’re far from being able to answer this
question. However, railway companies can increase
risk awareness on the basis of sophisticated data
analytics. This means they can exploit the data
they have to fill gaps in their knowledge. Thus, we
can rephrase the previous question as, what are
the run-over hot spots along the railway lines?
Our data analytics workflow had five stages.
In our description of these stages and through-
out the rest of the article, we don’t give the real
values or describe the time period we used, for
privacy reasons.
The first stage was descriptive analysis. To char-
acterize incidents, we initially employed 57 attri-
butes; each incident type had a related attribute.
We employed this attribute as a target variable
for further classification or prediction learning.
So, this stage gave us an overall picture of the
incident data. The data records came from the
internal information system related to incidents
that occurred on one of Vale’s railways in Brazil
within a six-year time frame. We focused on in-
cidents related to run-overs. To prepare the data
for classification, we also had to properly label the
incidents so that we could distinguish positive
cases (run-overs) and negative cases (almost run-
overs). We did this under the guidance of Vale’s
safety engineers.
The second stage was feature selection, which was
based on a correction heuristic strategy using the
random-forest method. We carried out the data
analytics with the caret (Classification and Regres-
sion Training) R package. We selected the 13 co-
variates that most influenced the outcome; among
them, only six were spatial. We confined our study
to those six. One of the 57 attributes was the tar-
get or class attribute (run-overs). We labeled that
attribute “Yes” when the data record was related
to a run-over and “No” when it wasn’t.
The third stage was knowledge discovery. Because
we were interested in identifying the variables that
could discriminate positive and negative cases,
we applied machine learning. The choice of the
proper machine-learning method was a trade-off
between ease of understanding and precision. To
build the best classification model, we investigated
techniques such as recursive partitioning trees,
conditional trees, and generalized linear models.
This first evaluation showed that the random-
forest method performed best (85 and 95 percent
accuracy with a confidence interval of 0.81 and
0.87). We had no straightforward way to calculate
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g5pes.indd 53
each covariate’s effects. On the other hand, we
could explore the predictors’ weighting factors by
using a multiple-linear-regression model (75 and
95 percent accuracy with a confidence interval of
0.72 and 0.77). This let us determine each covari-
ate’s corresponding odds ratio values. We rounded
them up to their full values, which became each
variable’s weight when we compiled the index.
Railway companies can increase risk
awareness on the basis of sophisticated
data analytics.
The fourth stage was model building and evalu-
ation. For this stage, we performed a hold-out
phase. (A hold-out is a model evaluation scheme
that machine-learning techniques sometimes em-
ploy; it helps avoid overfitting.) We split the data
into two sets: 70 percent for training and 30 per-
cent for posterior validation. We built the model
by using cross-validation on the training set.
The final stage was creation and statistical analy-
sis of the risk index. We created the index from the
multiple-linear-regression model. Given the previ-
ous weighting factors, we needed only to calculate
a normalized risk index by taking into account one
of the six covariates—let’s say, the city.
The run-over risk index per city provided an in-
teresting measure for situation awareness along the
railway. However, business analysts couldn’t use it
to explore what-if scenarios for better elaboration
of safety polices. In fact, when the safety engineers
saw the risk index, they asked us to integrate this
information with socioeconomic information, as
we mentioned earlier. They wanted to understand
how the socioeconomic information correlated
with the incident risk index. To support them, we
integrated visualization and data analytics.
Visual Mapping of the Data
When almost all the data contain geographic-
location information, visualization on a map is
the most reasonable choice. We could have rep-
resented the railway in several ways. For example,
we could have employed a linear representation,
showing only the railway track against a simple
monochrome background. Instead, we used a
representation showing the track from a satellite
image, with the surrounding area forming the
background. This representation gave a more real-
istic view of the affected area.
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 Business Intelligence Analytics
(a)
(b)
Figure 1. The gradients for (a) red and (b) blue. 5 Red indicates worse-
than-average values; blue indicates better-than-average values.
We chose this design to humanize the problem
by letting the visualization include socioeconomic
data. Furthermore, by showing a realistic map, we
could leverage the users’ prior knowledge about
the region and enable the visualization to be a
communication tool for the railway employees.
So, the visualization included colored maps to
assist knowledge acquisition of the georeferenced
data. However, this approach raised the question
of how to color the maps to represent the data.
Linear scales are common and provide clear vi-
sualization. Rainbow patterns are often used in
meteorological systems, but the literature suggests
they can sometimes be misleading.3 We employed
two distinct colors, which we felt would improve
the visualization and allow better visual compari-
son of the results.
So, red indicated worse-than-average values, and
blue indicated better-than-average values. Figure 1
shows a gradient of these colors. We created our
gradient using the plotGoogleMaps R package,
which provides a standard interface for maps.4 We
only had to specify the color scheme, which the
RColorBrewer R package then carried out.
Figure 2 shows the application’s simplest screen,
which illustrates the degree of risk associated with
run-overs in each city. We mapped the colors to
the risk value, as Figure 2’s legend shows. We
painted the full area of each town or city to con-
trast this area with the railway track, which we
painted black. This lets the safety engineers, for
Figure 2. The cities and their associated risk index. The railway track is painted in black.
54 September/October 2014
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g5pes.indd 54
example, visually compare the length of a railway
line that passes through a city with the associated
risk index.
In addition, socioeconomic information from
the Brazilian Census Bureau about each town or
city can be visualized and analyzed in conjunction
with the risk index. For example, Figure 3 shows
the relationship between the risk index and the
Gini index. The Gini index is a measurement of
statistical dispersion that represents the income
distribution of a nation’s residents. (It can be used
to explain a government’s policies and plans re-
garding a community.) A higher Gini index means
that most of the income is concentrated in the
hands of a few people. To represent the Gini index
data, the visualization uses the same coloring it
used to represent the risk index. This lets users
determine whether locations with poor income
distributions are more exposed to risk.
However, specialists must analyze this factor
case by case because these data are highly context
sensitive. Other socioeconomic variables might
have a greater impact on the analysis results. So,
users can also analyze the risk index’s correlation
with
■■ the population size,
■■ the population density,
■■ the human-development index,
■■ the per capita income,
■■ the urban growth rate,
■■ access to electricity,
■■ access to drinking water,
■■ public waste disposal services,
■■ the literacy/illiteracy ratio, and
■■ the urban/nonurban population ratio.
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 Figure 3. Comparing the risk index with the Gini index. This index is a measurement of statistical dispersion
that represents the income distribution of a nation’s residents.

Figure 4. The ratio between the rate of literacy and illiteracy and the risk index. The pie charts maintain the
original proportions and show both classes (for example, urban versus nonurban areas).

Originally, we employed pie charts instead of col-
ors in contexts in which the visualization needed to
clearly represent only two classes of information:
“positive” (literate or urban) versus “negative” (il-
literate or nonurban) factors. Pie charts could also
be applied to energy, drinking water, and public
waste disposal services. The plotGoogleMaps pack-
age also supports pie charts, which are suitable for
dealing with ratios. Figure 4 shows the literacy/
illiteracy ratio as reflected in the risk index.
However, when the two classes have similar pro-
portions, using a color bar instead of a pie chart
could aid users’ visualization and understanding. So,
users can choose between a pie chart and color bar.
In this case, the color bar (as in Figure 3) is always
relative (normalized between 0 and 1 from the lower
to the greater values, showing the “good” value—the
percentage of the urbanized area, literate people, and
so on). In contrast, the pie chart (as in Figure 4)
maintains the original proportion and shows both
classes (for example, urban versus nonurban areas).
Figure 4 gives a good picture of what users can
draw on to define safety policies to reduce the
number of incidents. For instance, policies that
depend on written media to prevent run-overs
might be ineffective because many people in the
country are illiterate. Furthermore, the specialists
could see a trend in which every city with a high
incident risk index also had a high illiteracy rate,
although exceptions to this pattern existed.
So, what sets the outlier cities apart? The answer
might prompt further interesting ideas. However,
the specialists might interpret the data in unex-
pected ways. The results of using a visualization
to support the definition of policies depend heav-
ily on the specialists’ knowledge, experience, and
intuition.
Furthermore, users can explore detailed data
for a city by clicking on its area. These details in-
clude the socioeconomic data already mentioned
(the Gini index, population size, and so on). Us-
ers can examine this extra information without

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 Business Intelligence Analytics
Figure 5. Details of the city Governador Valadares,
seen in Figure 4. Users can obtain extra information
without disrupting the visualization in which they’re
immersed.
leaving the view they’re inspecting (see Figure 5).
This functionality lets them obtain extra informa-
tion without disrupting the visualization in which
they’re immersed.
We designed our VA system to be extensible;
that is, users can add other types of information
to increase its effectiveness. For example, users
could employ meteorological data to determine
how weather conditions influence incidents. Fur-
thermore, additional socioeconomic and temporal
data can enhance our system by letting safety en-
gineers disclose valuable knowledge and commu-
nicate it effectively to other stakeholders.
Users can explore what-if scenarios by simply
contrasting the “agreement” between red and blue
when two types of information are present (for
example, the incident risk index versus the Gini
index). We created the VA and data analytics parts
of our system using the R programming language.
We integrated all the maps in an HTML front-end
container so that Vale safety experts could easily
access and use them through Web browsers.
Evaluation
We conducted semistructured interviews with three
Vale personnel who were potential users. One was
an operational analyst, another was a safety engi-
neer, and the last one had a leadership role in the IT
department. All three participants had full access
to the system and used it for several days before the
interviews. We aimed to investigate
■■ how they would use the system,
■■ whether the system provided information that
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g5pes.indd 56
would help them in their decision making, and
■■ what suggestions or comments they had on how
to improve the system’s interface and usefulness.
The operational analyst stated he would use the
system to more effectively visualize and commu-
nicate with local leaders and Vale’s policymak-
ers about which towns or cities were in a serious
situation and whether this correlated with any
socioeconomic statistics. He found that the visu-
alization’s color scheme was suitable. However, he
also stated that “as long as there was a subtitle in
the charts, one would not mind what colors were
used in the visualization.”
The safety engineer stated he could use the sys-
tem to explain the choice of a location for inves-
tigating socioeconomic factors of the people living
alongside the railway line. He planned to use the
system to aid his decision making.
All three participants asked us to find a way to
import datasets besides the one from the Brazilian
Census Bureau, so that they could compare risks.
The operational analyst also asked whether we
could refine both the indexes and visualization
to also take neighborhoods into account. He ar-
gued that the cities were heterogeneous enough
to justify this additional level of granularity. The
Brazilian Census Bureau provides socioeconomic
data linked to census-designed places. The census-
designed places are usually smaller than the neigh-
borhoods the first participant referred to. We’re
working on a scheme to achieve this, which should
make our system more accurate.
The IT leader asked us to include socioeconomic
and temporal factors in the model. Temporal fac-
tors involve investigating whether incidents are
more frequent at certain times. So, future versions
of our system will likely include them.
The participants said they can already use the
system to understand incident patterns and take
corrective measures. Such measures include run-
ning safety campaigns, imposing new speed limits
in specific regions, building traffic barriers, and
recommending the building of overpasses.
As the participants’ feedback shows, much work
remains to be done. We need to improve both the
model and the method of visualization to further
aid the specialists’ decision making. However, all
the participants were thrilled with the system’s
potential benefits and made valuable suggestions
about how to improve it.
In our view, validation of our system could in-
volve more decision makers in a formal study of
usability, which would enhance the Vale employ-
ees’ feedback.
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 W e believe our results are applicable to other
domains involving georeferenced data be-
cause such data can be represented with color
schemes, polygons, and markers. (However, the
polygons must be visible to users.) Our experience
building our system leads us to offer three tips to
practitioners.
First, match the visualization with the users’
knowledge and domain. As we explained before,
we adopted a map representation because it was
more intuitive for the intended users. They were
already used to this type of representation and
therefore wouldn’t need to learn a new visualiza-
tion scheme.
Second, get early feedback. We first built a
simple visualization; then, on the basis of user
feedback, we improved the system. Getting early
feedback was important to ensure we were meet-
ing the users’ expectations before we committed
more resources designing and implementing them.
Finally, add visualizations as needed. Instead
of developing a system with several types of vi-
sualizations from the beginning, we first plotted
one dimension of georeferenced data on maps at
a time. When users needed to see the correlation
of different data dimensions, we added that infor-
mation to the visualization by using polygons and
markers on Google Maps.
Future studies will focus on integrating other
information sources and other incident types be-
sides run-overs. So far, the positive feedback we’ve
received suggests that our system can be of great
value to safety engineers and specialists in both
making and communicating decisions.
Acknowledgments
We thank our Vale collaborators for their thought-
provoking insights and help with our visual-analytics
system’s design.
References
1. H. Fukuda, “A Study on Incident Analysis Method
for Railway Safety Management,” Quarterly Report
Railway Technical Research Inst., vol. 43, no. 2, 2002,
pp. 83–86.
2. J.J. Thomas and K.A. Cook, Illuminating the Path: The
Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics,
IEEE CS, 2005.
3. D. Borland and R.M. Taylor, “Rainbow Color Map
(Still) Considered Harmful,” IEEE Computer Graphics
and Applications, vol. 27, no. 2, 2007, pp. 14–17.
4. M. Kilibarda and B. Bajat, “PlotGoogleMaps: The
R-Based Web-Mapping Tool for Thematic Spatial
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Data,” Geomatica, vol. 66, no. 1, 2012, pp. 37–49.
5. D. Borland and A. Huber, “Collaboration-Specific
Color-Map Design,” IEEE Computer Graphics and
Applications, vol. 31, no. 4, 2011, pp. 7–11.
Wallace P. Lira is a software engineer in the Vale Insti-
tute of Technology’s Environmental Informatics Lab. His
research interests are visual analytics and software quality.
Lira received his MSc in computer science from the Federal
University of Pará. Contact him at wallace.lira@gmail.com.
Ronnie Alves is an adjunct researcher in the Vale Institute
of Technology’s Environmental Informatics Lab. His research
interests are data mining, machine learning, and bioinfor-
matics. Alves received a PhD in computer science from the
University of Minho. Contact him at ronnie.alves@itv.org.
Jean M.R. Costa is a PhD student in Cornell University’s
Department of Information Science. At Cornell, he has been
working on research projects related to mobile sensing and
social network analysis. He was with the Vale Institute of
Technology when the research in this article was performed.
Costa received an MSc in computer science from the Federal
University of Pará. Contact him at jmd487@cornell.edu.
Gustavo Pessin is an assistant researcher in the Vale In-
stitute of Technology’s Environmental Informatics Lab. His
research interests are mobile robotics, machine learning, and
wireless sensor networks. Pessin received his PhD in com-
puter science from the University of São Paulo’s Institute
of Mathematics and Computer Science. Contact him at
gustavo.pessin@itv.org.
Lilyan Galvão is an MSc student in sustainable use of
natural resources for tropical regions at the Vale Institute
of Technology. Her research interests are urban morphology
and informal settlements. Galvão received a BSc in archi-
tecture and urbanism from the Federal University of Pará.
Contact her at lilyangalvaos@gmail.com.
Ana C. Cardoso is an associate professor in the Federal
University of Pará’s Public Policies Department. She was
with the Vale Institute of Technology when the research in
this article was performed. Her research interests are urban
planning, urban studies, and urban design. Cardoso received
a PhD in architecture from Oxford Brookes University. Con-
tact her at aclaudiacardoso@gmail.com.
Cleidson R.B. de Souza is a research manager at the Vale
Institute of Technology and an associate professor at the Fed-
eral University of Pará. His research interests are computer-
supported cooperative work and software engineering. De
Souza received a PhD in information and computer sciences
from the University of California, Irvine. Contact him at
cleidson.desouza@acm.org.
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