Human Science Division

Profile

Our division is composed of four laboratories: Safety Psychology, Ergonomics, Safety Analysis, and Biotechnology. Our research covers Human factors contributing to improving safety and comfort of railways, and technical support and safety actions of operation aptitude inspections with knowledge of human science.

Introduction

The Human Science Division is aiming at solving the problems and proposing the countermeasures in order to improve the safety, convenience and comfortability of railways, based on the understanding acquired by measuring, evaluating and analyzing the psychological, physical, physiological and behavioral characteristics of people, such as passengers using railways and workers operating them. The recent issues on the human science are human error prevention, safety management support, driver support, the method of injury reduction in the event of a train collision, abnormality/accident handling, the improvement of car inside environment and station environment, user service support and countermeasures against such outside factors threatening the railway safety as level-crossing accidents and deer-train collisions.
We will keep our policy of valuing the human models useful for the practical application of the outcome of our research to commerce or industry and furthermore promote a dynamic human-factor research by actively using the latest brain activity measuring technology.

Koji Omino - Director, Human Science Division

Laboratories and their field

Safety Psychology

Safety Psychology is in charge of psychology aptitude test for train driver operation staff and method of safety educations as prevention of accidents with human errors by employees.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics is in charge of enhanced comfort, safety and usability in trains and facilities for passengers, improving work environment for employees, and environment of educations and training.

Safety Analysis

Safety Analysis is in charge of supporting to promote safety management and safety climate.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is in charge of various themes to promote safety and comfort related to biological systems. Ongoing major projects are Safety evaluation of magnetic field, Improvement of air quality by prevention of odors caused by fungi, construction materials or other factors and Prevention of train-animal collision, especially with deer.