Enhancing security in public transportation services of Roma: The PANDORA system

Nowadays local public transportation services (TPL) in large cities have to be considered critical infrastructures as, for instance, power plants or dams. Especially in Rome, where quite a million citizens per day uses TPL, any interruption in the public services can cause severe deterioration in urban life quality, congestion, compromised mobility and accessibility and enhanced pollution. Moreover TPL, and particularly subways, has been (remember the tragic facts in London subway on July 7th 2005) and still can be a target for terrorist threats and attacks. Therefore security must be considered as a crucial component in TPL services offer. Nevertheless lessons learnt from our experience, have suggested to apply some enhancements to the “classical” security model to switch the security operator from a mostly passive to a quite pro-active role and from a reaction to occurred events to preemptive actions. In other words, the role of security operators has to move from simple passive control (e.g. “see” events) in real-time, transferring data to stakeholders and ensuring timely decision-making without unnecessary steps in the communication chain. This paper will show how the advanced security services provided by our “PANDORA” system can enable this paradigm evolution. The “PANDORA” system is funded by the Italian Infrastructure and Transportation Ministry within the program framework of TPL security enhancement in the largest Italian cities.