UIC’s Sabotage, Intrusions & Attacks Working Group (SIA WG) deals with a variety of topics relating to railway system disruptions. The most recent meeting of the WG focused on politically-motivated interventions and military transport. The meeting was chaired by Marita-Annegret Grosser (DB AG) and the questions debated by the participants included:

• What types of politically-motivated interventions have occurred in the past? What were their origins from a political point of view? Why the focus on rail transport?
• What countermeasures have been implemented? Has cooperation with the investigating authorities been adapted accordingly?
• Have there been any cross-border actions?

Erik Sandhill (Trafikverket) was unanimously elected as the new vice-chair of the WG during the meeting. UIC thanked him for his efforts and is looking forward to productive cooperation.

In the afternoon, a joint session with the COLPOFER WG was held on the topic of terrorism and extremist activities and the SHERPA (Shared and coHerent European Railway Protection Approach) EU project. SHERPA (running from 1 November 2018 to 31 October 2020) has received funding from the European Union’s Internal Security Fund for Police. The project aims to increase the overall level of protection of European stations and trains against terrorist attacks by reducing current knowledge gaps concerning the phenomenon and implementing multiple collaborative actions for the relevant stakeholders. The SHERPA consortium is composed of six partners: UIC, DB AG, FS S.p.A, PKP S.A., SNCB and SNCF, and is supported by an advisory board comprising CER, COLPOFER, RAILPOL, UITP, Nederlandse Spoorwegen and SBB.

Marie-Hélène Bonneau (UIC – Project Coordinator) and Delphine Beatse (SNCB – Leader of Work Package 2 (WP 2)) gave an overview of recent SHERPA activities and the outcome of the WP 2 regarding a coherent approach for terrorist risk assessment and management. Afterwards, Catherine Jarrige (SNCF – Leader of Work Package 3 (WP 3)) presented the content and planned activities for the current Work Package on analysis of emerging terrorism-related threats against stations and trains.

As insider threats are one of the topics of WP 3, the afternoon was dedicated to this topic and around 30 participants gave an insight into their procedures regarding insider threats. Focus points were, inter alia, the screening process for different employee groups/functions as well as for suppliers/service providers according to the requirements of EU and US sanction lists. The participants were from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italia, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia and Sweden.

The WG meeting concluded with a technical visit with operational security provider DB Sicherheit GmbH. The security guards demonstrated a training exercise with security dogs and a special response team for dealing with complex situations.

Forthcoming security events:

• 12 April 2019: SHERPA EU project – workshop on emerging terrorism-related threats against stations and trains (Paris)
• 18 – 20 June 2019: 5th UIC Security Week (Paris) – further information is available at: https://events.uic.org/uic-security-week-2019
• 20 – 22 November 2019: 15th UIC World Security Congress (Prague)