Concept of Resistance in the Railway Infrastructure Elements Protection

Abstract

Railway transport is an important subsector of Europe’s critical infrastructure. Railway infrastructure elements are under continuous risk from a wide range of disruptive events which might disrupt the functioning of railway infrastructure and threaten the safety of passengers. For these reasons, their protection must be guaranteed. A meaningful approach to the protection of critical infrastructure elements is the concept of resilience. In the current model, resilience consists of repressive and reinforcing factors but lacks preventive factors. Based on the above, the paper deals with the concept of resistance in the protection of railway infrastructure elements. In this context, resistance can be perceived as the ability of an element to prevent the occurrence of a disruptive event. These are preventive measures which determine structural resistance and resistance in the protection of railway infrastructure elements.