To facilitate comparisons between rail safety in each of the
jurisdictions in Australia, comparisons between rail safety in
Australia and in other countries, and comparisons between the
safety of the different modes of transport (air, water, road and
rail), the ATSB has referred wherever possible to national and
international standards. The Australian standard AS 4292, Railway
safety management, includes an appendix titled 'Incident definition
and recording requirements'. State rail safety regulators have also
devised a national standard called 'Occurrence categories and
definitions'. Both of these standards are an important first step,
but they fall far short of defining a 'minimum common dataset' as
this is understood in the field of quantitative research.