IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reensy/v260y2025ics0951832025001796.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk propagation mechanisms in railway systems under extreme weather: A knowledge graph-based unsupervised causation chain approach

Author

Listed:
  • Huang, Yujie
  • Zhang, Zhipeng
  • Hu, Hao

Abstract

Frequent and intensive adverse weathers can cause severe rail accidents through domino effect, posing significant challenges to railway safety and operational reliability. A detailed elucidation of the risk propagation mechanism across hazardous events is critical for effective risk management in rail transportation. Risk pathways involve various meteorological factors, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and consequences, in which each exhibits distinct causation strengths, trigger probabilities, severity levels, and high-impact points. To disclose the characteristics of weather-related railway domino effect accidents, this paper develops a novel railway causation analysis methodology based on an event logic graph. This framework enhances existing knowledge graph-based methodologies by emphasizing the evolution and logical progression of sequential hazardous events. Besides, an unsupervised accident causation chain linking technique is proposed, which integrates historical accident data into the knowledge graph to build a comprehensive graph database. It facilitates data-driven analysis of both structured and unstructured accident records without requiring laborious annotations. By thoroughly evaluating topological features and statistical indicators via a real-world dataset of weather-related railway accidents, key risk propagation patterns such as risk path dependence, path convergence, and risk escalation curves are recognized. Critical nodes including risk amplifiers, critical junctures, and marginal risk contributors within six critical domino chains are identified. These findings inform targeted risk mitigation strategies to prevent risk propagation and escalation. The proposed methodology and results offer theoretical support and actionable insights for enhancing safety and reliability management of railway systems under extreme weather conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Huang, Yujie & Zhang, Zhipeng & Hu, Hao, 2025. "Risk propagation mechanisms in railway systems under extreme weather: A knowledge graph-based unsupervised causation chain approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:260:y:2025:i:c:s0951832025001796
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.110976
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832025001796
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ress.2025.110976?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yang, Cheng & Yin, Weihao & Liu, Xueting & Huang, Yanwen & Lu, Dagang & Zhang, Jie, 2024. "Tornado-induced risk analysis of railway system considering the correlation of parameters," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).
    2. Feng, Jian Rui & Zhao, Meng-ke & Lu, Shou-xiang, 2024. "Accident spread and risk propagation mechanism in complex industrial system network," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    3. Huo, Xiaosen & Yin, Yuan & Jiao, Liudan & Zhang, Yu, 2024. "A data-driven and knowledge graph-based analysis of the risk hazard coupling mechanism in subway construction accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).
    4. Chen, Xiyuan & Ma, Xiaoping & Jia, Limin & Zhang, Zhipeng & Chen, Fei & Wang, Ruojin, 2024. "Causative analysis of freight railway accident in specific scenes using a data-driven Bayesian network," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    5. Zhang, Zhipeng & Lin, Chen-Yu, 2025. "Risk analysis of weather-related railroad accidents in the United States," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    6. Liu, Jintao & Schmid, Felix & Li, Keping & Zheng, Wei, 2021. "A knowledge graph-based approach for exploring railway operational accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    7. Ma, Xiaoxue & Deng, Wanyi & Qiao, Weiliang & Lan, He, 2022. "A methodology to quantify the risk propagation of hazardous events for ship grounding accidents based on directed CN," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    8. Gholamizadeh, Kamran & Zarei, Esmaeil & Yazdi, Mohammad & Ramezanifar, Ehsan & Aliabadi, Mostafa Mirzaei, 2024. "A hybrid model for dynamic analysis of domino effects in chemical process industries," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    9. Song, Bing & Zhang, Zhipeng & Qin, Yong & Liu, Xiang & Hu, Hao, 2022. "Quantitative analysis of freight train derailment severity with structured and unstructured data," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    10. Zhihui Wang & Zhihan Lv, 2021. "Risk Prediction of Sports Events Based on Gray Neural Network Model," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2021, pages 1-10, June.
    11. Weihua Zhu & Kai Liu & Shoudong Wang & Ming Wang & Shengli Liu, 2024. "Estimating the functional impacts associated with rainfall-induced hazards for Chinese railway system: fragility, risk and its uncertainty," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 120(11), pages 9585-9607, September.
    12. Wang, Wenhao & Wang, Yanhui & Wang, Guangxing & Li, Man & Jia, Limin, 2023. "Identification of the critical accident causative factors in the urban rail transit system by complex network theory," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 610(C).
    13. Su, Yunsheng & Shi, Luojie & Zhou, Kai & Bai, Guangxing & Wang, Zequn, 2024. "Knowledge-informed deep networks for robust fault diagnosis of rolling bearings," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    14. Liu, Jintao & Schmid, Felix & Zheng, Wei & Zhu, Jiebei, 2019. "Understanding railway operational accidents using network theory," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 218-231.
    15. Valcamonico, Dario & Baraldi, Piero & Zio, Enrico & Decarli, Luca & Crivellari, Anna & Rosa, Laura La, 2024. "Combining natural language processing and bayesian networks for the probabilistic estimation of the severity of process safety events in hydrocarbon production assets," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    16. Qian, Yongsheng & Da, Cheng & Zeng, Junwei & Wang, Xuexin & Zhang, Yongzhi & Xu, Dejie, 2022. "A bidirectional quasi-moving block cellular automaton model for single-track railways," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 598(C).
    17. Gu, Shuang & Li, Keping & Feng, Tao & Yan, Dongyang & Liu, Yanyan, 2022. "The prediction of potential risk path in railway traffic events," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    18. Kang, Renwei & Wang, Junfeng & Chen, Jianqiu & Zhou, Jingjing & Pang, Yanzhi & Guo, Longlong & Cheng, Jianfeng, 2022. "A method of online anomaly perception and failure prediction for high-speed automatic train protection system," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    19. Lam, C.Y. & Tai, K., 2020. "Network topological approach to modeling accident causations and characteristics: Analysis of railway incidents in Japan," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    20. Chantal C. Cantarelli & David Oglethorpe & Bert Wee, 2022. "Perceived risk of lock-in in the front-end phase of major transportation projects," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 703-733, April.
    21. Amin, Md. Tanjin & Scarponi, Giordano Emrys & Cozzani, Valerio & Khan, Faisal, 2024. "Improved pool fire-initiated domino effect assessment in atmospheric tank farms using structural response," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    22. Zhou, Jian-Lan & Lei, Yi, 2020. "A slim integrated with empirical study and network analysis for human error assessment in the railway driving process," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    23. Liu, Jintao & Chen, Keyi & Duan, Huayu & Li, Chenling, 2024. "A knowledge graph-based hazard prediction approach for preventing railway operational accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    24. Sonja Szymczak & Frederick Bott & Pierre Babeck & Annett Frick & Benjamin Stöckigt & Kathrin Wagner, 2022. "Estimating the hazard of tree fall along railway lines: a new GIS tool," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 112(3), pages 2237-2258, July.
    25. Junwei Zeng & Yongsheng Qian & Fan Yin & Leipeng Zhu & Dejie Xu, 2022. "A multi-value cellular automata model for multi-lane traffic flow under lagrange coordinate," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 178-192, June.
    26. Zeng, Tao & Wei, Lijun & Reniers, Genserik & Chen, Guohua, 2024. "A comprehensive study for probability prediction of domino effects considering synergistic effects," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 251(C).
    27. Cui, Shuhui & Lyu, Shouping & Ma, Yongzhi & Wang, Kai, 2024. "Improved informer PV power short-term prediction model based on weather typing and AHA-VMD-MPE," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Jintao & Ji, Lin & Chen, Keyi & Li, Chenling & Duan, Huayu, 2025. "Railway operational hazard prediction and control based on knowledge graph embedding and topological analysis," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    2. Liu, Jintao & Chen, Keyi & Duan, Huayu & Li, Chenling, 2024. "A knowledge graph-based hazard prediction approach for preventing railway operational accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    3. Li, Haiwen & Qi, Lin & Wang, Mudan & Liu, Junying, 2025. "Operational resilience modeling of cross-border freight railway systems: A study of strategies to improve proactive and reactive capabilities," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 257(PA).
    4. Zhang, Hengqi & Geng, Hua, 2023. "A methodology to identify and assess high-risk causes for electrical personal accidents based on directed weighted CN," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    5. Ma, Weikai & Wang, Yanfu & Xing, Peijie & Yang, Ming, 2025. "A Monte Carlo-based modeling method for the spatial-temporal evolution process of multi-hazard and higher-order domino effect," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 253(C).
    6. Catelani, Marcantonio & Ciani, Lorenzo & Guidi, Giulia & Patrizi, Gabriele, 2021. "An enhanced SHERPA (E-SHERPA) method for human reliability analysis in railway engineering," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    7. Zhang, Hengqi & Geng, Hua & Zeng, Huarong & Jiang, Li, 2023. "Dynamic risk evaluation and control of electrical personal accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).
    8. Xu, Jiamin & Mo, Siwen & Xu, Zixuan & Chen, Zhiwen & Yang, Chao & Jiang, Zhaohui, 2025. "Semi-supervised ISA: A novel industrial knowledge graph construction method enhanced by the fault log corpus analysis and semi-supervised learning," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    9. Liu, Jintao & Schmid, Felix & Li, Keping & Zheng, Wei, 2021. "A knowledge graph-based approach for exploring railway operational accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    10. Valcamonico, Dario & Baraldi, Piero & Macêdo, July Bias & Moura, Márcio Das Chagas & Brown, Jonathan & Gauthier, Stéphane & Zio, Enrico, 2025. "A systematic procedure for the analysis of maintenance reports based on a taxonomy and BERT attention mechanism," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 257(PA).
    11. Zhang, Zhipeng & Lin, Chen-Yu, 2025. "Risk analysis of weather-related railroad accidents in the United States," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    12. Huo, Xiaosen & Yin, Yuan & Jiao, Liudan & Zhang, Yu, 2024. "A data-driven and knowledge graph-based analysis of the risk hazard coupling mechanism in subway construction accidents," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 250(C).
    13. Gu, Shuang & Li, Keping & Feng, Tao & Yan, Dongyang & Liu, Yanyan, 2022. "The prediction of potential risk path in railway traffic events," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    14. Li, Haoqian & Wang, Yong & Zeng, Jing & Li, Fansong & Yang, Zhenhuan & Mei, Guiming & Ye, Yunguang, 2024. "Virtual point tracking method for online detection of relative wheel-rail displacement of railway vehicles," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 246(C).
    15. Liu, Yanyan & Li, Keping & Yan, Dongyang, 2024. "Quantification analysis of potential risk in railway accidents: A new random walk based approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    16. Bhardwaj, U. & Teixeira, A.P. & Guedes Soares, C., 2022. "Casualty analysis methodology and taxonomy for FPSO accident analysis," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 218(PB).
    17. Chen, Honghao & Chen, Guohua & Xiong, Caiyi & Wu, Yue & Li, Xiaofeng & Gao, Xiaoming, 2025. "An inherent safety assessment tool for storage tank farm layout planning based on dynamic propagation modeling simulation of fire domino effects," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    18. Zhao, Yixin & Cai, Baoping & Cozzani, Valerio & Liu, Yiliu, 2025. "Failure dependence and cascading failures: A literature review and research opportunities," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    19. Lin, Boliang & Zhao, Yinan, 2021. "Synchronized optimization of EMU train assignment and second-level preventive maintenance scheduling," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    20. Karimi Dehkordi, Mohammadreza & Sattari, Fereshteh & Lefsrud, Lianne, 2025. "Creating an incident investigation framework for a complex socio-technical system: Application of multi-label text classification and Bayesian network structure learning," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:260:y:2025:i:c:s0951832025001796. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/reliability-engineering-and-system-safety .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.