At the invitation of FS, a New Technology working group and PROTECTRAIL joint workshop was held in Rome on 31 May and 1 June 2012.
This was the opportunity to bring together rail security representatives (FS/RFI, Indian Railways IR, French Railways SNCF, Dutch operator NS, UK transport authority TRANSEC, Italian metro operator ATAC and the UIC security division) and industry representatives (Alstom, Ansaldo, Bombardier, Thales and Selex).
After welcoming the participants, the chairman of the new technology working group Franco Fiumara, Central Director, Security Department, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Group, explained the group’s principles and expected goals.
The “New Technologies” working group was set up to focus on the following main aspects using the experiences gained by the most important railway groups:
- Identification of the most dangerous threats against the railways
- Search for effective solutions to counter these threats by means of:
in-depth study of best practices and in-depth study of the more effective technological innovations proposal for new technological tools
Stefano de Muro, Manager of the RFI Technical Security Unit, proposed four new main areas of work:
- Set up a Technology Observatory which would monitor and scout new “security technologies”, suggest technologies for specific issues on demand, release a “New Technologies Update Brochure” yearly
- Draft a UIC leaflet on Technologies to be used for the protection of railway assets
- Work out a method to assess the reliability of video analytics
- Organise trials of new technologies
This workshop was also the occasion to take stock of the ongoing work on the PROTECTRAIL project, submitted to the EU Commission as part of FP7 (7th Framework Programme for research and technological development), which started on 1 October 2010. Several presentations were given by the project partners on train/ground integration, the demonstrator site in Poland, the Security and the Railway Traffic Management System and the expectations and ongoing work on standard aspects of Security.
Railways deploy many efforts to search new technologies that are user-friendly for the railway environment and cost effective. The discussions held during these two days where very useful in providing the supply industry with end-user requirements in order to integrate these elements into their work.
Presentations are available in the UIC extranet system, in the private workspace dedicated to security at https://www.uic-online.com/
