Nowadays railway stations are affected by a large variety of threats. They span from a wide range of daily crimes (pick-pocketing, graffiti, vandalism, etc.) to sophisticated threats (organised crime, cybercrime, terrorism, etc.). To handle this, and to protect passengers, staff and stations as much as possible requires comprehensive, coherent and collaborative answers.

Within this context, a decision was taken to create a project group with a co-leadership of station managers and security managers. Furthermore, it was the theme of the UIC World Security Congress that was held on 23 – 25 November 2016 in Helsinki.

Around 15 security and station manager experts attended this first meeting held on 6 March and agreed on a common approach. The aim is to analyse effective solutions for station security measures and their impact on station business elements and customer perception. Therefore, the project group will provide guidelines and recommendations on “station security – station business” for longstanding balance, including potential improvements to be available for future developments on new stations and implementation at the existing ones. The results will be summarised in a dedicated handbook and presented during the NextStation Conference, which will be held from 19 – 20 October 2017 in Madrid.

To exchange knowledge about different kinds of security measures and their impact on station business, a decision was taken to hold three workshops with security and station manager experts taking place on the following dates:

• 10 – 11 April 2017 in Ostrava, Czech Republic – focusing on technical measures
• 12 May 2017 in Paris, France – focusing on organisational and procedural measures
• 14 June 2017 in Moscow, Russia – focusing on human factor measures