From 19 to 21 April 2023, the UIC Security Division organised a series of meetings at the UIC headquarters within the Security Platform, with UIC members having the opportunity to participate in the UIC Security Platform’s 10th permanent Human Factors Working Group (HFWG) meeting and the following day in the kick-off meeting of the newly formed Crisis Management Working Group (CMWG). This was followed by a Security Platform Steering Committee meeting and a technical visit to SNCF.

On the first day, 24 security experts from 12 countries gathered to discuss the refreshed HFWG scope and work programme for 2023–25. During the meeting, the new Chair since 1 January 2023, Peter Lambrinakos, Chief of Police and Corporate Security at Via Rail Canada, emphasised that human factors are a basic part of railway security, which relies on key elements such as skills, knowledge, and the use of tools. Therefore, he underlined the working groups’ vital role in providing guidance and advice to reduce security incidents and mitigate their consequences.

During the meeting, members of the working group selected topics and decided upon the main activities for the next few years. The working group will focus on topics such as the feeling of security, public awareness, public and corporate security culture, security training, and social prevention strategies, such as aggressive behaviour de-escalation techniques.

Grigore Havarneanu, UIC HFWG Point of Contact, explained that the members and the target audience are expected to not only include rail security experts but also extend to psychologists and experts from research and academia.

The next working group meeting will take place in autumn 2023.

On the following day, 30 railway security experts from 16 countries gathered for the Crisis Management Working Group’s kick-off meeting. This group aims to foster cooperation on the security aspects of crisis management, such as procedures when dealing with a security incident, training, the efficacy of different crisis management plans, and sharing experiences from recent security-related crises.

The first meeting was intended to be an opportunity for the working group members to get to know one another, express which topics they would like to focus on, and discuss the best way forward with regards to the three-year working plan. The meeting began with Laura Petersen, the UIC CMWG Point of Contact, presenting details of the activities that the security division has undertaken so far on this topic, as well as of the available materials and UIC publications, such as the Recommendations on Crisis Management.

Next, the Chair, Jerzy Trocha from the Polish State Railways, the Vice Chair, Munawar Khursheed of the Railway Protection Force of Indian Railways, and the working group experts put forward the topics that they would like to explore. The diversity of the suggestions reflected the breadth of the crisis management field, ranging from drawing on expert experience through study visits, crisis management in the case of terrorist attacks, how to adapt existing crisis management plans to ISO standards, developing Business Continuity Plans, and emphasising the links between crisis management and critical infrastructure resilience, to crisis communication and restoring the public’s trust.

Thanks to an interactive session using an online live poll, the group’s experts were able to share their thoughts and opinions for further progress without difficulty, with these results being integral when developing the final work programme 2023-25. The next working group meeting is also scheduled for autumn 2023, and will be held in Warsaw, where members will have the opportunity to continue the discussions and work, as well as to participate in their first technical visit to the Railway Stations Security Centre in Warsaw and visit a local volunteer fire brigade.

In the afternoon of 20 April, members of the Security Platform Steering Committee met to summarise the previous quarter’s activities and set the direction for the next period.

The UIC Security Platform Chair, Sanjay Chander, lauded the success of the Security Congress, held two months ago in Jaipur, India, and also highlighted the contents of the final declaration (available at https://uic.org/events/IMG/pdf/uic_wsc_jaipur_final_declaration.pdf) approved by the Congress participants. This “has set the agenda for the future by affirming UIC’s commitment to work together with member organisations towards providing a more safe and secure rail network across the globe, also fully bringing the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and African regional assemblies into action by 2025”. The Vice Chair, Xavier Roche from SNCF, also stated how the conclusions of the 18th UIC World Security Congress, contained in the Jaipur Final Declaration, would be the Committee’s compass for the coming months and years.

In addition to developing cooperation between UIC regions, the Security Platform will strive to strengthen the protection of vulnerable rail users, such as women and children, and combat human trafficking in trains and stations. As a follow-up of the congress, Murat Yildirim from INTERPOL attended the meeting and gave a presentation on human trafficking, which was followed by a discussion on how to further develop UIC and INTERPOL’s cooperation on this important global issue.

On the final day, the Security Platform Vice Chair invited guests to a technical visit at the Gare du Nord station. In the first part of the meeting, an expert from the Performance and Innovation Programmes Department shared SNCF’s experiences with video analytics in the field of security management and described some of their innovative projects. Later, the guests had the opportunity to visit the SNCF Security Centre, where operators oversee the security of rail passengers throughout France.

Any experts who are interested in joining the working groups can contact the UIC Points of Contact directly:

• For the HFWG, Grigore Havarneanu at havarneanu at uic.org
• For the CMWG, Laura Petersen at petersen at uic.org