ATTACS

Assessing the socio-economic impacts of Terrorist Threats or Attacks following the Close down of public transportation Systems

Duration: 
2014 to 2016
Sector: 
Cost-benefit Analysis of Transport Security
Project type: 
EU
External Link: 
http://www.attacs.eu/

The ATTACS project aims to build a tool to support decision making in the transport protection field. The tool will enable transports operators and authorities to estimate all the economic and societal implications of a forced close down of part (or the whole) of their public transport system, so to be able to make better, informed, security related decisions. Objectives of the project are:

  • To develop a simulation environment that will allow local/regional/national government or other public decision makers to assess (urban/regional) economic impacts of a complete (or partial) close down of a public transport system (such as bus, underground, tram and train) for different lengths of time;
  • To get comfort on the calculation results by testing the underlying dynamic model on real pilot cases and discuss the outcome with the respective transport operators and responsible authorities, that will be involved during the project course;
  • To produce a user friendly decision support tool based on the final model that enables the cost calculation for parts of public transport networks possibly in all major European cities, on the basis of local characteristics and available data (customizable DSS);
  • To raise sensibility in the critical infrastructure operators (with specific reference on the focus of the project, that is that transportation network systems) about the possibilities offered by new and advanced policy modeling and decision making support tools enhanced by ICT solutions based on advanced, sometimes hybridized, modeling techniques for governance applications, as also explained in detailed in the chapter 22 A Living Roadmap for Policymaking 2.0 of the Handbook of Research on Advanced ICT Integration for Governance and Policy Modeling (Sonntagbauer, et. al. 2014). In ATTACS project the objective is to raise awareness on the fact that similar tools can be particularly helpful in the assessment of various security and protection (prevention and/or intervention) policies.

The tool will enable transports operators and authorities to estimate all the economic and societal implications of a forced close down of part (or the whole) of their public transport system, hence be able to make better, informed, security related decisions. The main beneficiaries of the project are the transport operators and authorities, but also the society and the transport passengers, addressing in particular the objective 2 of the EU Internal Security Strategy on protecting transport systems.

The project, financed by the Directorate General “Home Affairs” of the European Commission on the 2011 call of the CIPS Programme, involves the following partners:

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