After running for 24 months, the Horizon 2020 European project SAFETY4RAILS has come to an end, with its final conference being held on 28 September 2022 in the Paris UIC HQ. Around 80 participants gathered for the conference, among them representatives from the project’s partners, Advisory Board members, and external guests.
The SAFETY4RAILS Consortium is led by Fraunhofer EMI and comprises of 31 partners from 13 different countries (Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Greece, Finland, Hungary, Israel and the Netherlands), including 8 end-user organisations. The partners are also railway operators, railway infrastructure managers, research centres, academic institutions and industry suppliers, bringing together a range of complementary skills required for this multidisciplinary project.
The project coordinator Stephen Crabbe, from Fraunhofer EMI, moderated the discussions alongside Marie-Hélène Bonneau, UIC Head of the Security Division, who also acted as the project’s end-user coordinator.
The project’s aim was to increase the security and resilience of railway and metro infrastructure against both cyber and physical threats. The project was organised around the five phases of the resilience cycle (identify, protect, detect, respond, recover).
The main results were:
- Individual input tools being combined and extended.
- The SAFETY4RAILS Information System (S4RIS) platform being created. It is a system for data and information exchange to respond to different phases of the resilience cycle.
Four simulation exercises were carried out during the project, which were all based on distinct and different scenarios: a combined cyber and physical attack on a Madrid Metro Station near a stadium, cyber and physical attacks in Ankara, a terrorist attack in a railway station in Rome, and a flood in Milan.
After the opening session, Uli Siebold, the project’s technical coordinator from CURIX, moderated a real-time joint demonstration of the SAFETY4RAILS tools. The hypothetical scenario of a terrorist attack was used to this end, involving a physical attack on a central control room, leading to the launch of a cyberattack on network sensors, and a bomb explosion from abandoned luggage on a platform. The different phases of the live demo included a scenario setup, risk analysis and reports, a real-time 3D simulation, crowd and unattended luggage detection, and impact spreading at stations, etc.
Following the demonstration, participants were able to have a more detailed look at 11 of the SAFETY4RAILS tools in the room and learn more about each of their objectives, functions, and plans for future development.
Stephen Crabbe closed the conference by highlighting the main lessons learnt during the project, and the release of the final brochure (available at https://safety4rails.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Safety4Rails_Final-brochure_26SEPT22-2.pdf).
Having received positive feedback consistently over the course of the two-year project, plans are now underway to apply SAFETY4RAILS’ results in real life, especially as S4RIS has been shown to have strong potential for commercial use.
The presentations given during the conference are available at https://safety4rails.eu/2022/10/01/safety4rails-final-conference-was-held-on-28-september-in-paris-france-at-uic-hq/
The information appearing in this article has been prepared in good faith and represents the views of the author. Neither the Research Executive Agency, nor the European Commission are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained in this abstract.
SAFETY4RAILS can be followed on Twitter @Safety4R as well as on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/safety4rails-eu-project/)
The project website is available at https://safety4rails.eu/
