Maintaining a safe transport system in a fast growing public transport sector is a political and a scientific challenge. The only way to avoid the corresponding growing number of fatalities is to reduce the accident rate. This requires identification and understanding of the causes that lead to transport incidents and accidents, which often share similar patterns of events and causes between different public transport modes. The JRC supports the preparation and implementation of the Commission's inter-modal transport policy by giving support in the domain of public transport safety to EU policy-makers (DG MOVE) as well as policy-implementers (EU regulatory Transport Agencies and National Competent Authorities). The MULTRA action provides these stakeholders with tools and services that allow them to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate EU policies, which help to guarantee an acceptable level of safety in European wide public transport.

The MULTRA (Multimodal Transport Safety) activity, previously known as ECCAIRS (European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems) started as a feasibility study for the Commission, after which it steadily grew to its current dimension where about eight JRC staff and a similar amount of external consultants are allocated on a full time basis.

MULTRA’s initial goal was to obtain safety improvement through incident report collection and analysis in the European aviation transport domain. During the years this has been extended by including accident reports, by widespread usage outside the EU context and by covering also transport domains other than just aviation.

The MULTRA action’s mandate is directly related to practical implications coming out of various EU Directives and Regulations in the transport safety area. As a consequence the three EU transport agencies (European Aviation Safety Agency, European Maritime Safety Agency and the European Railways Agency) have become essential partners in the implementation of the policy together with the competent authorities of the Member States who remain primarily responsible for the correct and complete collection of the safety data.

MULTRA’s ECCAIRS Reporting System has now become a valid solution for storing accident and incident related safety information for aviation, maritime and railways. The added value of Multimodal ECCAIRS is that it offers a standard reporting and analysis platform that can be used in multimodal organizations (reducing significantly development, training and deployment costs). It also stimulates and facilitates experts in the various transport domains to learn from each other by exchanging information and methodologies. At a European level Multimodal ECCAIRS helps politicians to look at safety aspects of an EU wide intermodal transport system.