December 07, 2020
"Access to large scale public events needs to be performedin a se-cure and efficient manner". Thus, the Romanian Protection and Guard Service (Serviciul de Protecţie şi Pază–SPP) has the objective to ensure that all security measures are considered and employed so that threats are detected in time and that any vulnerabilities are fixed before they can be exploited. CONNEXIONs assisted SPP in achieving the desired level of security with the aid of a platform that can help officers to detect threats, plan security measures, and review measures with the goal of improving human skills.
The first iteration for the PUC1 pilot test on “Counter-terrorism security in large scale public events” was organised by SPP and took place in December 7th, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a physical meeting could not be organised and therefore a remote meeting was organised, where technical partners could assist the officers when their intervention was needed.
The pilot demonstration took place at SPP headquarters in Bucharest. Officers with different specialities joined the demonstration and shared their experience by evaluating the platform from different points of view. All measures were taken to ensure that national regulations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic were strictly followed. All functionalities within the platform were objectively tested and evaluated from the point of view of each officer, by providing feedback to the developers in the form of a questionnaire.
Overall, one can conclude that SPP officers are enthusiastic to involve more technological solutions in their everyday tasks and to reduce time and effort for performing their duties. This first demonstration of the CONNEXIONs platform for PUC1 can be considered a success; there are of course still some aspects that need attention and the next iterations will fix any identified limitations and will shape the platform to fit more the needs of officers. SPP highly values the work of its consortium partners and expresses its availability to help improve the CONNEXIONs platform to reach its highest peak.