The UIC Security Division had four interventions during the 5th edition of the International Rail Human Factors Conference, which was held in London from 14 – 17 September 2015 (http://www.rssb.co.uk/railhf2015). These interventions consisted of the presentation of two papers and organisation of two interactive workshops covering several important topics for railway security.
The paper entitled “Design of the main stations and multimodality: developing comprehensive security for attractiveness and efficiency” was presented in 15 minutes to an audience of approximately 50 persons by Virginie Papillault, Senior Advisor within the UIC Security Division. This paper aimed at presenting the feeling of security of the end users at stations and on trains in order to improve the attractiveness of the railways and security performance. She explained the complexity of security at main stations and presented a new systematic and comprehensive approach which integrates a multi-disciplinary vision from security, safety, environment, civil defence and resilience called comprehensive railway protection. She explained that to answer the questions of complexity and security of main stations we should improve the subjective level of security and better analyse the feeling of security. Finally she proposed an innovative methodology from UIC in order to better address these issues for passenger, non-security staff dealing with public and for security staff.
A complementary interactive workshop was then organised in order to develop a “Comprehensive security for attractiveness and efficiency: training programme for stations design and management”. The objective was to reflect on the best way to organise training modules for station users, both for the public and non-security railway staff. It was based on the comprehensive railway protection framework and included a role play exercise with two groups and based on two scenarios. It allowed the UIC Security Division to identify the core elements of a future successful training programme for all station users.
The second important topic was covered by Grigore Havârneanu, Research Advisor within the UIC Security Division, through a paper and a workshop. The paper entitled “Behavioural interventions to prevent trespass and vandalism: Lessons learned from the RESTRAIL and GRAFFOLUTION research projects” presented a set of integrated results from two EU FP7 projects in which UIC actively participated. The 15-minute presentation included a discussion on how measures can be combined to increase their efficiency for trespass and vandalism prevention in the context of a behavioural theoretical framework applied to the rail context. The audience composed of approximately 30 persons was actively engaged in this discussion.
The main results of the RESTRAIL project (REduction of Suicides and Trespasses on RAILway property) were reported in more detail during the workshop entitled “Presentation and update of the RESTRAIL Toolbox: A free online tool that helps to save lives along the railways”. The aim of this workshop was to train safety, security and human factors experts to use the tool on a current basis and to collect feedback and inputs from the attendees. This is consistent with the follow-up strategy adopted by the Security Division at the end of the RESTRAIL project to constantly disseminate and improve the RESTRAIL toolbox (www.restrail.eu/toolbox) for the benefit of the entire railway community.
