This disaster complexity case study examines Spain's deadliest train derailment that occurred on July 24, 2013 on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. Train derailments are typically survivable. However, in this case, human error was a primary factor as the train driver powered the Alvia train into a left curve at more than twice the posted speed. All 13 cars came off the rails with many of the carriages careening into a concrete barrier lining the curve, leading to exceptional mortality and injury. Among the 224 train occupants, 80 (36%) were killed and all of the remaining 144 (4%) were injured. The official investigative report determined that this crash was completely preventable.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 26. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 August 2026.
All research outputs
#1,865,233
of 34,582,852 outputs
Outputs from Diaster Health
#6
of 31 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#24,854
of 447,858 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Diaster Health
#1
of 2 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,582,852 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 31 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 23.2. This one scored the same or higher as 25 of them.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 447,858 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 2 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them
