Periodic Report Summary 2 - SECUR-ED (Secured Urban Transportation - European Demonstration)
As more and more Europeans are living today in urban areas, urban mass transportation has become the de-facto preferred and often only possible transport mode for a significant part of the daily commuters. Hence, the challenge in Europe is to provide efficient, affordable, reliable, safe and secure mass transportation systems.
SECUR-ED stands for “Secured Urban transportation – European Demonstration”, it is a demonstration project of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7), Theme SEC-2010.2.1-1 and one of the biggest FP7 Security projects.
SECUR-ED is the phase II demonstration project of the Mass Transportation Security programme, and is following the phase I preliminary study named DEMASST.
As stated in R [1] section B1.1.2 the main objective of SECUR-ED is to give transport operators of large and medium cities of Europe the means to enhance urban transport security. The second main objective is to enlarge the mass transport security market for the European industry.
In order to reach these ultimate objectives, SECUR-ED is proposing flagship demonstrations in big cities (Madrid, Paris, Milan, Berlin) and additional satellite demonstrations in medium cities (Lisbon, Brussels, Bilbao…) showing how to increase the security in mass transportation.
SECUR-ED addresses security of people and infrastructures, from minor offences to major terrorism threats, in an inter-modal environment (transport nodes), taking into accounts various legal, cultural and societal environments.
As public transportation operations interact directly with people and society, security enhancements require addressing all together the social contexts in which the transportation systems are operating.
The SECUR-ED approach will be designed from the ground up to ensure that the solutions proposed and demonstrated are not only technically feasible, but can also be smoothly integrated within existing operational procedures and are appropriate with respect to societal demands.
Conversely, a global enhancement of security in urban public transport systems cannot be achieved without the operator’s staff in charge of the day-to-day network operations. Integrating and maintaining security procedures within the overall set constraints that each operator has to tackle is an endless task. Identifying risks and issues, developing adequate procedures to manage these risks and issues and training the operator staff while continuously operating the networks is a daily challenge. Sharing best practices, starting from risk assessment and ending with complete training packages, is therefore seen in SECUR-ED as an essential condition to achieve the project objectives.
Simultaneously, SECUR-ED will provide technical capacities addressing the most efficient topics for security enhancement. These capacities will be designed in an interoperable way, so as to facilitate their adoption and use by various operators. This will in turn promote and facilitate the adoption of standardized European security solutions for transportation operators and further opening up the European market.
It is running for 42 months and has a total budget of €39.983.498 partly funded by the EU (€25,468,072.00). 40 participants from 13 countries contribute to this project coordinated by THALES (TCS).
Project Results:
SECUR-ED started on the 1st April 2011 and was kicked-off the 3rd May 2011 in Paris.
During the first 12 months of the project (Period P1), partners have built solid foundations in a partnership spirit. Collaboration and cooperation was supported through several deliverables addressing the overall governance and providing a common basis for all technical matters. The publication of a Quality Control Manual deliverable together with several templates has allowed for a good implementation of quality processes. Additionally, efficient communication means (mailing lists, collaborative website) have been established. The implementation of a collaborative web portal open to all SECUR-ED members allows sharing documents, meetings and actions.
Important dissemination activities such as project presentations and press releases have been realized, in order to promote the project. A public website www.secur-ed.eu has been created and provides an overview of the project.
Several deliverables assessed the preparedness of the Public Transport Organizations (PTOs) with regard to the security issues and proposes methods to progress in this matter.
Above all, a sound technical basis has been established through the first developments of a common framework to be used during the whole project. A security and transportation common vocabulary has been set up and the preliminary architecture to be used throughout the project has been established, namely the host architecture and interfacing rule on which the different technical solutions will be built and the demonstrations implemented. This “common basis” being in place, most of the on-going activities concentrate on the functional modules, on the technical capacities that will populate the host architecture and on the practical aspects of the demonstrations. Capacities providers and public transport operators are working in a collaborative way in order to progress on these tasks, never forgetting that interoperability and reusability of the capacities are the key objectives of the project.
In parallel, several meetings of the 4 Advisory Groups (Public Transport Operators and Authorities, Law Enforcement and First Responders, Industry, Ethical and Societal issues) and of the Advisory Board have been organized (September 2011, November 2011, March 2012, April 2012), in order to link the community of the various stakeholders. The overall goal is to receive feedback from these various Advisory Groups and to provide this information to the Consortium and to the Advisory Board in order to improve acceptance of the SECUR-ED outcomes to the widest possible range of stakeholders outside the consortium, therefore contributing to the European added value.
Finally, a Plenary Meeting has been held in December 2011 in Paris in order to share the progress of all project activities after nine months between the partners, to ensure consistency of all project activities, to secure the remaining deliverables of period P1, and, above all, to define the work plan securing completion of the major deliverables expected in period P2.
1.2.2 Period P2 –April 2012 to July 2013
A second Advisory Board meeting has been held on April 2nd, 2012, where all the Advisory Groups leaders gave their feedback and recommendations on the first year progress (following an AGs meeting on March 28, 2012).
On April 27th, 2012, the first Project Review was held with the attendance of the Project Officer and the three appointed EC Experts. Achieved results were presented and the experts asked for some additional information. Then, six deliverables have been updated and re-submitted on SESAM to take into account EC experts comments.
Some deliverables have also been updated after the end in order to better reflect the work done in the Project. This is particularly the case of D21.1 “Public transport security terminology, glossary, common terms & definitions” where definitions have been updated and new ones added. D31.1 “State of the Art Preparedness Approaches for PT Operations” has been improved by new procedures added and some updated.
The end of 2012 has been focussed on finalising the requirements analysis and defining the demonstrations implementation basis, in line with the contents of the planned deliverables:
• A high number of SP3 deliverables were completed, providing state of the art analysis, gap analysis and prototype implementations for most capacities
• The SP4 demonstrations specifications D4x.1 (scenarios) and D4x.2 (functional specifications) were frozen
• The SP5 demonstrations definition methodology (D51.1 D51.2) was defined, and the the risk assessment methodology applied in the various cities.
A common methodology has been established to finalise the demonstration specifications. In each SP4 demo city, a workshop was conducted, where the city PTO presented their scenario specifications (D4x.1) to all potential capacity providers, in order to define together the functional specifications (D4x.2). For each SP4 demo, one lead integrator has been appointed.
This process also enabled to refine the catalogue of SECUR-ED capacities, which has been useful not only to SP3, but also to D41.2 (detailed architecture and set of ICDs, defining the open interfaces guaranteeing interoperability between capacities) and D51.2 (experimentations building manual, describing how to respond to identified security threats with the appropriate capacities).
SP4 demonstrations integration started between the demo operators, integrators, and solution providers.
The definition of SP5 demonstrations has followed the complete SECUR-ED methodology and progressed fast thanks to the accumulated project experience:
• Five additional cities were selected to perform a risk assessment in WP52: Bergen, Krakow, Flensburg, Bilbao & Gaziantep.
• The risk assessment exercise has been completed in all SP5 cities: Brussels, Lisbon, Izmir, Bucarest, Flensburg, Bergen, Krakow, Bilbao & Gaziantep …)
• It was decided to perform two additional demos in Bilbao and Bergen. The Bilbao PTO decided to join the consortium. The Bergen demo will show how the SECUR-ED toolkit can help a young PTO organisation to raise its security awareness and competence.
• Demo scenarios have been defined for all SP5 demonstrations in dedicated workshops, and solutions are being identified.
A batch of 38 deliverables, along with a technical synthesis was provided to EC experts on January 18th 2013.
A significant effort has been devoted to D11.1 involving many SECUR-ED partners beyond WP11 partners, to review the already large corpus of policies, standards and research results related to security in public transport.
The consortium also started activities related to the results and performance assessment, towards the dissemination of future-proof best practice materials for the industry of security in public transport.
WP54 (performance benchmarking) and WP46 (demonstrations results consolidation) have been kicked-off in order to define the demonstration assessment guidelines and the capacities assessment metrics early enough in the project. Deliverables 46.1 and 54.1 have been distributed for review to all concerned SECUR-ED partners. WP55 has also been kicked-off and refined to ensure that best practice materials and handbooks will be disseminable for future use within the sector beyond the sole SECUR-ED consortium.
In parallel to the technical tasks, dissemination activities progressed, following three main axis:
• Regular promotion of the project, with the regular issue of the project newsletter, the refinement of generic SECUR-ED presentation materials that fuelled participation to several professional conferences, the regular update of the web-site including project news and availability of communication material for download.
• Preparation of the mid-term conference, to be held on May 30th in Geneva
• Preparation of the final dissemination material: definition of the SECUR-ED videos contents, and definition of an interactive format of WP55 deliverables to ensure long term adoption of the SECUR-ED toolkit.
At the end of period P2, SECUR-ED demonstrations are starting throughout Europe.
Potential Impact:
The 4 flagship demonstrations (Madrid, Paris, Milan and Berlin) and the planned deliverables are means to achieve long-term results. The satellite demonstrations will show that the solutions are reusable, scalable to medium cities and modular.
The impact of the SECUR-ED project on the mass passenger transportation sector will be significant. This is thanks to the solid composition of the Consortium which is highly representative of the sector both from an operator and supplier point of view. In addition to this, the wide scope of the four Advisory Groups further ensures that all relevant stakeholders are involved. As a result, the project will pave the path for the future of sector in terms of technological and procedural solutions across the Member States of the European Union.
For Operators:
The positive impact on public transport operators would cover several aspects. Firstly, the demonstrated technologies will provide immediately implementable solutions which will directly improve both the real and perceived security of the networks. Secondly, the focus on the possibility of integrating new capacities will greatly improve the ability for security systems to evolve into a system of systems. Thirdly, the enlargement of the security market for the industry will result in more affordable and more tailored solutions to their security needs.
For Suppliers:
The European rail supply industry has a leading position in the world market, valued around € 85 billion in 2008, of which it captures around 50 % in Europe. The supply industry is highly interested in any initiatives which help to promote European standards and their promotion outside of Europe. Since an integrated vision for transport security systems has necessarily to focus on a change to the current situation, leading to cost cutting, efficiency gains and improvements in quality, a substantial impact can be expected for both users and suppliers in general.
Moreover the specific objective in terms of standardisation and interoperability solutions will have a strong impact due the highly representative nature of the consortium. Only the main stakeholders are able to implement change in such complex systems - and they are all present in the project.
Another major impact through increased standardisation and interoperability will be that suppliers will also benefit from a further opening of the market. This is of strategic importance to the suppliers and also benefits operators of course as they will be able to choose from a set of different suppliers rather being bound to a very limited number of suppliers or even only one supplier.
For the EU citizen:
Finally, the impact of societies will include an improvement of the level of security of public transport networks across the European Union, in cities both large and medium. The improvement of passengers’ perception of security will encourage more users to use public transport, thus improving the quality of lives of EU citizens in general.
List of Websites:
www.secur-ed.eu