SAFEST

Public spaces, such as airports, railway stations, or stadiums bring together large numbers of people on limited space to use security-sensitive infrastructure. These spaces pose two distinct challenges to public security: (a) detecting unauthorized intrusions and (b) monitoring large crowds in order to provide guidance in case of unexpected events (e.g., a mass panic). To ensure the safety of the general public as well as individuals, we thus require a flexible and intelligent method for area surveillance. One example in which current monitoring systems proved to be dangerously inefficient is the Love Parade music festival in Duisburg, Germany, July 2010. Crowd control failed to provide guidance to a large crowd, resulting in a mass panic with 21 deaths and several hundred injured. In this particular case, overloaded communication infrastructure led to a lack of information about the density and the movement of the crowd, which in turn resulted in misjudgments on appropriate strategies to resolve the situation. This incident highlights the need for more sophisticated and reliable methods for area surveillance. The SAFEST project, as presented in this text, aims at analyzing the social context of area surveillance and developing a system that can fulfill this task, both in terms of technology as well as acceptance by the general public. Said system is envisioned to be easy to deploy, inexpensive, resilient against malfunctions of individual components, and to respect the privacy of citizens. The system will operate in distributed way, collect anonymized data, securely transfer this data to a central location for evaluation, and – if necessary – notify the operator and/or issue alerts directly to the general public. Work on the technical aspects of the system is accompanied by social studies investigating the individual perception of risk and the methods for reaching public acceptance of technical solutions. The consortium for the SAFEST project consists of eight partners, comprises a national coordi- nator for security-related research, universities, national institutes for applied research, and industry partners (including one operator of security-critical infrastructures). Within the consortium, Sagem D ´efense S ´ecurit ´e (SAGEM) will adapt its sensing platform to monitor human movement; the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) will provide a reliable communi- cation mechanism that is capable of covering large areas; and Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) will establish the end-to-end security between devices. Based upon this platform, Freie Uni- versita ¨t Berlin (FU) will detect security-relevant situations; Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST) will aggregate the information and alert affected individuals; and daviko GmbH (DAV) will contribute video support for the system. The Forschungsforum O ¨ffentliche Sicher- heit (FO ¨ S) will investigate privacy and acceptance issues related this approach and provide guidance with regard to legal and social implications. To ensure the real-world applicability of the project re- sults, a demonstrator of the system will be evaluated at Berlin Brandenburg International airport, which is currently being constructed by Flughafen Berlin Scho ¨nefeld GmbH (FBS). The SAFEST project addresses the following topics relevant to the call: It proposes a solution for crisis management, addressing social, technical, and economic issues; it enhances the protection of the population against risks and dangers, including the evaluation of acceptance of said solution; and it addresses the protection of critical infrastructures by the means of a comprehensive technical solution. Furthermore, the bi-national structure of the French/German project consortium enables the pursuit of these goals while sharing of knowledge and expertise for the mutual benefit of the partners.