The SAFETY4RAILS project is dedicated to increasing railways’ resilience to combined cyber-physical threats.
To ensure any solution developed is well and truly anchored into the reality of end-users’ daily needs, the Consortium kick-started the project by hosting a workshop with that community. The first session held online on 14 December 2020 brought together 14 participants from 5 countries while the second held on 15 December brought together 33 participants from 13 countries. The audiences gathered among others European railways and metro operators, EU national public authorities and research centres.
The workshop gave the Consortium an opportunity to deep-dive into trends and commonalities observed by railway and metro operators and first-responders as they face physical, cyber and combined threats. Early research results were presented, allowing the Consortium to validate these with those who will ultimately benefit from the solution developed in the framework of this project.
The two workshop sessions yielded lively discussions, paving the way to a comprehensive understanding of current threats face by railways and metro stakeholders. The sessions began with a presentation of a risk assessment, with a specific definition of what constitutes combined threats. Interactions focused on agreeing a risk classification, taking into account a multiplicity of factors to provide a comprehensive picture. Participants also discussed and ultimately validated a threat management cycle.
The Consortium used the workshop to present initially identified operational requirements and presented a matrix pitching impact against probability to determine which priority to give to each threat. Concrete use-cases ensured discussions remained grounded in reality, and allowed the collection of further end-user needs.
The two intense sessions of the first project workshop led the Consortium to significantly improve initial results, laying the groundwork for further analysis and research, and ultimately giving the Consortium the necessary operational knowledge to develop a solution matching the needs of railway and metro operators.
In line with the workshop objectives, the Consortium collect key input to develop a thorough grid-analysis of end-user needs.
The next workshop, which will focus on validation and prioritisation of end-user requirements for the SAFETY4RAILS Information System, will once more bring together stakeholders and end-users. It will seek to ensure a smooth transition towards the definition of scenarios to be tested later in the project.
CEIS
