PRocurEments of innoVativE, advaNced systems to support security in public Transport

Project Information

PREVENT

Grant agreement ID: 833444

DOI

10.3030/833444

Project closed

EC signature date 26 April 2019

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 31 July 2020

Funded under

• Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

Total cost

€ 1 894 305,00

EU contribution

€ 1 894 305,00

Coordinated by

ENGINEERING - INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PREVENT (PRocurEments of innoVativE, advaNced systems to support security in public Transport)

Reporting period: 2019-05-01 to 2020-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Terrorism is a growing world-wide concern, and numerous attacks have been organised to achieve high impact by killing civilians. These attacks have also, in many cases, underlined the ease with which terrorists have travelled within and between cities without being detected, using various public transport means to travel and / or to commit attacks.
Public transport contexts exhibit specific complexities:
• the environments manage fast moving flows of people, which should not be slowed down due to the impact on operational performance and the risk of creating crowd congestion;
• prior enrolment such as the one done through tickets and check-ins of identified individuals in airports cannot be transposed to public transport systems;
• the diversity of objects that can be transported by an individual cannot be limited in the case of public transport, contrary to public events and airplane travelling. For instance, a kitchen knife can be bought for legitimate use in the house, but could also be carried as a weapon;
• the potentially very short time lapse between a terrorist entering a subway train or station and committing an attack;
• by definition public transport encourage seamless multi-modal mobility within and between cities, easing the mobility of civilians and terrorists, of legitimate goods and dangerous objects.
In this context, PREVENT focuses on pre-empting attacks in public transport by enabling earlier detection of terrorists and potentially dangerous objects, tracking of detected individuals or situations and coordinating the response of security forces.
The overall PREVENT Objectives are:
1. Deliver a fully defined common challenge;
2. Identify realistic process and technological advances;
3. Define cooperation governance for the eco-system of practitioners and public buyers;
4. Animate and expand the eco-system;
5. Train public buyers for shared approaches to procurement;
6. Implement steps for procurement.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

PREVENT adopted a top-down approach starting from consolidated and agreed scenarios covering the critical security issues down to a detailed identification of the complete set of innovation needs, both at process and technology levels, to ease coordination across the full chain of stakeholders, from transport operators to security forces and public authorities.
PREVENT has matched the innovation needs to the current economic capabilities of operators and analysed the potential benefits as well as the feasibility of moving to a shared model at procurement level but also at operational level. It has mapped these needs to the existing solutions and knowledge, using both a market analysis of solutions and suppliers and an extensive IPR and patents search, identifying how to best address the innovations and create a roadmap of innovations and related maturity levels.
PREVENT has then selected, from this roadmap, the highest priority innovation needs to define the first steps of a Pre-Commercial-Procurement shared risk approach – including the setting up of the public buyers’ group, the full elaboration of the common challenge and its translation into PCP documents.
PREVENT ensured also the full compliance with applicable regulatory frameworks including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR.
PREVENT main objectives have been implemented through 6 WPs delivering:
• an agreed set of rules and regulations to allow practitioners to exchange information about sensitive security challenges in public transport and elaborate commonly agreed scenarios, implemented on the PREVENT online collaboration platform;
• a methodology to speed up the identification and evolution of these scenarios, and the related needs in terms of solutions and innovations and a taxonomy for critical security threats in public transport;
• the PREVENT User Observatory Group (UOG) enlarging PREVENT’s community of practitioners and public buyers through a structured, focused and sustainable mechanism;
• a set of 6 refined and validated scenarios of critical challenges in public transport, agreed among practitioners within the project and beyond (UOG);
• the roadmap of innovation needs in direct relation to these scenarios, including the economic, market, technological, societal, security, patents, IPRs and suppliers’ map dimensions;
• a detailed study of procurement models in relation to these innovation needs;
• the initial documents of one PCP, based on one Common Challenge elaborated by selecting the highest priority innovation, supported by- and open to- a group of practitioners and associated public buyers beyond consortium partners.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

PREVENT has identified a consolidated set of requirements to address critical security challenges, jointly elaborated by practitioners operating public transport infrastructures and security forces. These were expressed and analyzed through an iterative process, starting from a larger base of scenarios and progressively refining them into more detailed scenarios that are then linked to a fully defined roadmap of solutions and innovations.
PREVENT also contributed to a better understanding of public transport security in terms of important issues that need to be addressed, gaps, requirements, opportunities, threats and priorities as well as an improved knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of technological services. This understanding will enable the establishment of synergies at EU level and stimulate new collaborations in the industry.
PREVENT resulting Common Challenge forms the basis for the subsequent ‘Pre-Commercial Procurement’ activity which has been submitted as a new proposal under the call SU-GM02-2020, eventually leading to the development of a solution for transportation security enhancement.
The User Observatory Group and the PREVENT governance model allowed to extend the cooperation to wide base of stakeholders composed of public transport practitioners and security operators. The identified common challenge and its beneath requirements have been collected and agreed among both project partners and UOG members.
PREVENT has setup the basis for the forthcoming PCP through the preparation of the initial phases of a PCP on the Common Challenge, and where public buyers have been trained on procurement methodologies and capabilities enabling them to speed up the processes to identify and address their future needs more efficiently;
As far as impacts on society are concerned, it is important to recall that terrorism in general and terrorist attacks in particular create huge societal impact. Every event has a direct impact, but as importantly the increasingly long list of events creates a lasting societal impact in terms of anxiety and perception of risk level. It also creates huge operational costs, such as those linked to the deployment, on a long-term basis, of additional security forces. PREVENT’s contributions has therefore the following contributions:
• proposed models for more effective prevention and fight against terrorist attacks in transportation;
• facilitated a stronger cooperation between public transport operators, among operators and security forces and between operators and public authorities;
• stimulated a faster innovation and uptake in practitioners’ led research and innovation in the field of transportation security;
• promoting more efficient use of public money through pooling of financial and operational resources.

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