The fourth simulation exercise of the SAFETY4RAILS EU project was co-organised by LDO (Leonardo) and CDM (Comune di Milano). The event took place at CDM premises in Milan (Italy) and online on 6th July 2022 with some 50 representatives of the SAFETY4RAILS consortium and from its Advisory Boards.
The objective of this event was to demonstrate the fourth version of the SAFETY4RAILS Information System (S4RIS) platform, based on the scenario of a flood taking place during a major event in Milan, leading to of the need to redistribute passengers on city transport. In this scenario, the major flood is caused by torrential rain during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. It impacts the level of rivers close to the urban area and floods metro and train stations – particularly at key interchange points in the city towards the north (Garibaldi station, exchange point between two metro lines, trains, trams and buses). As a consequence, the city’s two major metro lines are out of service, leading to the activation of replacement transport lines.
The exercise began with a detailed presentation of the scenario by CDM, including of the city’s transportation management and a mapping of systems and relevant stakeholders. The system architecture and specification of the SAFETY4RAILS Information System were then presented by the Project Coordinator in overview. The introductory presentations were concluded by LDO on the implementation of the simulation exercise.
The tool demonstration was structured around the four key stages of resilience, previously defined during the SAFETY4RAILS project:
- Prevention: activities performed before the incident, including identification and protection of key assets
- Detection & Response: activities carried out during the incident
- Recovery: activities undertaken to return CDM transportation services to normality
Several SAFETY4RAILS Information System (S4RIS) tools provided simulations of their capabilities to respond to the scenario. The exercise involved the evaluation of the combination of 8 tools integrated into the SAFETY4RAILS platform.
During the exercise, SAFETY4RAILS partners presented how these tools work together to assist end-users, that is railway and metro operators, in preventing, detecting, responding and recovering from a natural hazard. Tool providers demonstrated how end-users can access the tools in the S4RIS platform graphical user interface (GUI) and how the tools communicate with one another to efficiently support them in dealing with the attack.
In the prevention phase, four tools were demonstrated:
- CAESAR: identified critical components of the Milan Railway network. The collected criticality was displayed on a georeferenced map, and what-if-scenarios were performed to analyse and compare the degradation and recovery of these critical components as the threat propagates across the network.
- SECURAIL: focused on computing the risk of each element of the Milan Railway network primarily to be affected to provide aggregated results through its dashboard.
- DATA FAN: provided a forecast of passenger loads at the Milan Porta Garibaldi and surrounding stations together with a measure of a reliability of the results with the aim of assisting end-users in redirecting passengers to alternative stations (for the situation that a station is closed), based on their predicted capacity.
- SARA: identified the risk and losses (economic or related to human life) caused by the threat inside the flooded stations.
During the detection and response phase, four tools were also tested:
- WINGSPARK: detected anomalies in metro speed, as well as potential overcrowded areas by analysing camera footage.
- CuriX: identified the anomaly in the monitoring data indicating a blackout of electrical power supply of the Porte Garibaldi station.
- CAESAR: measured the performance of different mitigation options on the metro and rail systems’ resilience.
- RAM2 displayed the detection alarms (a simulated flooding sensor, WINGSPARK, CuriX) and results of the simulation to support response actions (CaESAR) and proposed a list of mitigation actions.
During the recovery phase, S4RIS provided accurate information (through the CAMS tool) regarding the costs of recovery of assets involved in the event, considering the level of individual asset damage and cost to repair or replace the asset. A prioritisation for budget allocation was also given based on asset criticality.
To conclude, CDM representatives underlined the importance of an integration mechanism to better manage disrupting events such as flooding with the different transport operators and wider public stakeholders in the city.
The CDM exercise was the last in a series of simulation exercises of the S4RIS platform conducted over the past six months in Madrid (Spain), Ankara (Turkey) and Rome (Italy). The last demonstration of the SAFETY4RAILS tools will take place at the project’s final event, on the 28th September 2022 in Paris.
The information appearing in this article has been prepared in good faith and represents the views of the author. Neither the Research Executive Agency, nor the European Commission are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained in this abstract.
