From 8 – 11 October, PROTECTRAIL held its final demonstration in Zmigrod, Poland in the presence of about 100 people – among them EC representatives, partners, railway stakeholders, transport authorities and rail police. The IK Institute hosted this demonstration at the Zmigrod site. It allowed participants to discover all the state-of-the-art security solutions in real operational conditions, beyond laboratory tests. It represented an opportunity to understand how to protect railway systems and find solutions applicable for their specific challenges. For security providers from the industry, it was the perfect occasion to demonstrate their ability to integrate solutions in an interoperable manner.
In FP7, PROTECTRAIL is one of the largest integrated projects on security and probably the most relevant initiative in railway security at present. The objective is to develop a global framework, taking existing solutions, making them interoperable, testing them in demonstrations with real-life scenarios.
The beneficiaries of the project will be the security staff of the operators at different levels, crisis management structures run by authorities or police officers and finally the “end users” of railways, passengers and citizens.
The scenarios that were demonstrated during this week included: intrusion, criminal activities of staff, lost luggage and CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Explosives) detection.
The demonstration first considered threats in stations and to passengers, trying to identify which threats they could be faced with, and how to neutralise them as well the perpetrator. The demonstration showed this selected real-life scene: a piece of luggage left on a platform. The unattended luggage is just an example but it is valid for all kinds of threats in stations. Technologies help the operator to face threats without changing procedures, so the operator can increase its capabilities.
Then it considered the case of intrusion on trains in railway depots, and cyber intrusion. This can deal with the placement of explosives, as well as a homeless squatting during the night. The clearance of trains and the technologies for intrusion detection are a key part of the evaluation of the degree of the attack. The success lies in the prevention of all types of attacks and on strong cyber protection.
The project basis is to obtain common-share information, easy to understand and synchronised. For example, the format of CCTV video surveillance was published in November 2012 under the ISO 22311, and is the first implementation in the world of its kind.
The scenarios played out during this week are only the tools to exemplify the solutions developed, and provide the opportunity to illustrate the multiplying factor brought by a consistent, modular and interoperable integration.
To conclude this demonstration week, Carlo Dambra from Ansaldo STS, coordinator of the project, thanked all the partners involved and especially the hospitality of IK. He said: “At the beginning of the project we were 28 individual partners, now we are a team”.
The next key events to learn more about the project are:
- 13 – 14 November 2013 in Paris during the UIC global security congress co-organised by UIC and SNCF, a PROTECTRAIL dedicated stand will give feedback and results of the demonstration
- Beginning of January 2014, a satellite demonstration organised in France will be held to illustrate the protection of a tunnel and high speed train
- In spring 2014, the final conference to conclude the project will be held at UIC HQ
