Making Public Transport More Resilient to Terrorist Attacks

At train stations and airports, we often hear announcements reminding us to watch out for our personal items, and not to leave them unattended. This is one of the security steps to mitigate risk. We keep our belongings in suitcases and bags to make them easier to transport, but these useful items, unfortunately, provide an ideal space for terrorists to hide explosive materials.

The 7^th of July 2005 marks a tragic date for London. That morning, a series of four suicide attacks were carried out by Islamic terrorists. The targets were three London Underground stations and the number 30 double-decker bus. 52 people were killed and over 770 injured during this horrific event.

More recent examples of attacks on public transportation include the 2016 Brussels bombings, with 35 death victims, and the less impactful Parson Green train bombing in London, which still injured 27 people. In response to these attacks, European countries made significant efforts to enhance their approach to possible acts of terrorism. Unfortunately, such threats are still active.

Early detection of these attacks within the transport network is challenging, especially in crowded areas such as metro, train, bus stations, airports, etc. Masses of innocent people navigate these areas on their daily commutes and travels, making it hard to identify key risks while maintaining a soft-touch approach to enable travel to run efficiently. One of the possibilities to support the challenge is through the development of innovations designed to detect unattended items, which malicious actors can use to carry weapons or explosives. Several research and development activities, supported by the European Union, concentrate on this topic, and one of them is the PREVENT PCP project, which identified unattended items as one of the main threats to public transport security.

Efforts to PREVENT Against Threats

PREVENT PCP focuses on augmenting security in public transport and public areas through innovative procurement of technology solutions that will allow timely automatic detection of potentially dangerous unattended items, identification and tracking of perpetrators, and an advanced crisis management system. To achieve its goals, the project relied on the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) approach to produce innovations. This is a methodology supported by the European Commission that address the challenge of procuring innovative technologies suited to specific security needs.

Crucially, the PCP method benefits all parties involved, aiming to develop solutions that address the specific challenges outlined. The approach supports suppliers in accelerating the process of bringing scientific results to market and, importantly, ensures that taxpayer’s money is used to purchase innovative products that enhance the quality and efficiency of security systems.

In this article, we present how PCP works in practice. For a more detailed overview of PCP generally, with insights on how to prepare for this process, read our previous piece, which is based on the EU-funded SHIELD4CROWD project example.

Procuring Technologies in an Innovative Way

The implementation of the PREVENT PCP project was divided into 4 phases:

• Phase 0: Preparatory Stage, consisting of the Pre-Tendering and Tendering Phases
• Phase 1: Solution Design
• Phase 2: Prototype Development
• Phase 3: Operational Validation

PREVENT PCP is built on the outcomes of commonly agreed security scenarios, addressing critical security issues and a comprehensive set of innovation needs covering both process and technology aspects. These needs were initially defined in a previous project, PREVENT CSA, where extensive preparatory steps were undertaken during its implementation.

Having established strong foundations, the PREVENT PCP team published the ‘Prior Information Notice’ and organised the ‘Open Market Consultation’ meetings and activities to validate the planned PCP process with technology providers. Also, PREVENT PCP prepared the ‘Call for Tenders’ to provide a detailed description of the tendering process, the evaluation procedure, and the criteria used to select subcontractors.

Market Involvement

In Pre-Commercial Procurement, tenderers participate in a competitive process to develop the most appropriate technological solution, with applicants filtered out through several phases.

After much preparatory work, the project was finally able to open the application process for interested companies. The number of proposals received was very encouraging. There were 18 applications – with 9 sole tenders and 9 consortia. In total, 34 individual tenderers were involved, representing 8 EU countries and 1 associated EU country. After thorough analysis, the PREVENT PCP team announced the contractors awarded to compete in the first phase of the project:

• DAIMON Consortium– CS GROUP France, CERTH, XXII Group
• PreventUS A.I.– Ayvos A.S.
• Protecting Railway Transportation via Artificial Intelligence Consortium (PREVAIL)– Satways Ltd., imotion Analytics, Vicomtech
• BULL SAS– Bull SAS (Atos)
• PANOPTES Consortium– Herta Security S.L., ChapsVision, ACIC SA
• AI-Transportation Consortium– A.I. Tech srl, SAET SpA.

Having selected the contractors, PREVENT PCP entered phase 1: Solution Design. The awarded R&D providers were asked to describe their tools, provide the complete architecture and design overviews for the solutions and verify the technical, economic and organisational feasibility of their technological approach to address the PREVENT PCP challenge. A series of meetings between the project partners and contractors was arranged to help establish a detailed understanding of the solutions, and to review the requirements of the project against the contractors’ proposed systems.

Technological Solutions in Practice

Phase 2 of the PREVENT PCP: ‘Prototype Development’ was conducted with the participation of 4 qualified consortia: DAIMON, PREVAIL Consortium, BULL SAS, and PANOPTES.

This second stage of work was intense for all project partners, public buyers, and contractors participating in the PCP process. The activities included testing the algorithms at the contractors’ premises, installing and calibrating the solutions and then evaluating them. Moreover, there were numerous oral consultations along the way. Additionally, members of the Technical Management and Procurement Evaluation Committees, as well as other technical advisors, had 8 dedicated meetings with each contractor to strengthen collaboration and to help optimise the solutions’ performance.

After considering both the technical and financial aspects of the developed solutions, BULL SAS and PREVAIL teams were invited to phase 3: Operational Validation. Their solutions were deployed in several pilot sites and tested using the infrastructure of the PREVENT PCP partners.

During this phase, activities included:

• hardware delivery, such as servers and workstations,
• installations at each pilot site,
• camera calibration,
• fine-tuning tests of the solution for each pilot site and
• organisation of progress meetings.

Another important activity during phase 3 was the validation of societal acceptance, through the launch of a societal survey in each of the pilot countries.

How Did it End?

The goal of Pre-Commercial Procurement is to develop solutions to a high technology readiness level (TRL 8-9). Notably, PCP is not a process that finishes with the direct commercialisation of products. This happens when public buyers decide to conduct a follow-up Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI). PCP aim is to award a limited set of prototypes and/or test products. A follow-up PPI to cover the commercial volume of innovative solutions developed during a PCP would be subject to a new ‘Call for Tenders’.

PREVENT PCP finished on the 31st of October 2024, and the contractors have already concluded their work. The proposed solutions were assessed positively, and there are possibilities for adoption and use in daily activities. Also, there were functionalities identified that could - and should - be improved to increase the tools’ effectiveness. Considering PREVENT is an R&D project, the partners foresaw this, and it is natural that there are opportunities for continued development through other actions.

Considering the limited time contractors and project partners had to implement the innovative activities, the results are encouraging. Although no decisions have been made as of yet, the public buyers are generally open for participation in future procurement processes (PPI) to acquire PREVENT PCP’s technologies; meaning this PCP initiative may still  have further impact and contribute to augmenting the security of public transport and public areas.

Do you have any questions regarding the PREVENT PCP implementation? Don’t hesitate to contact the project team at: contact@prevent-pcp.eu!