Teleste’s situational awareness platform secures Helsinki Underground

Helsinki City Transport (“Helsingin kaupungin liikenneliikelaitos, HKL”) drives improved situational awareness and safer travel across the Helsinki metro system with Teleste’s S-AWARE® situational awareness platform. The deployment of the platform began in 2018. The project has been carried out in several phases and it was completed at the end of 2020.

With the aim of ensuring the safety and security of passengers and the entire metro system, Helsinki City Transport was looking for a solution to develop its response capabilities and ensure a high level of service, such as during possible security failures, alerts and states of emergency and other complex or critical situations. The target was to build a system for creating an overview of the security and safety situation at Helsinki Underground by collecting information from multiple security and safety systems as well as from observations and presenting the information in one common graphical user interface (GUI).

Solution to customer’s need

Teleste’s S-AWARETM situational awareness platform is tailored to the needs of HKL and its surveillance centres.

The platform has been designed to help enhance efficiency, safety and security in public transportation, airports, critical infrastructure and in the governmental sector. The platform works by collecting real-time information from various subsystems, data sources and sensory inputs, and it displays a unified and real-time view of the whole operational infrastructure. This provides an improved understanding of what is happening in the surroundings and ensures the grounds for decisive and efficient decision making.

• Teleste’s S-Aware provides a common umbrella for understanding the total security and safety situation at Helsinki Underground – collecting and presenting information and handling each situation.
• Communication between different stakeholders is strengthened by providing a uniform and user-specific real-time snapshot of security situations, changes and developments in a predefined format to surveillance centres and authorities. Common guidelines and parallel processes save time and allow for more efficient use and control of resources in handling complex and critical situations.
• S-Aware helps identify security threats (from status information received from various devices and their sensors and equipment) and ensures the availability of a response to a security failure or abnormal situation within the time required by the service level.
• Unified processes enhance customer service (delivery of information under abnormal circumstances) and enable efficient and safe evacuation in crisis situations (e.g. fire conditions).
• The included training system makes it easier for the operator and rescue services to train their workforce in the handling of exceptional situations and helps ensure efficient and correct operations in special situations.
• The system makes it possible to meet the official requirements of collecting, storing and sharing situational awareness information.

Benefits achieved

Teleste’s deployment to Helsinki City Transport makes possible the efficient use of the system for multiple operators, including the police, fire and rescue forces, traffic authorities and the cities of Helsinki and Espoo. Delivering the right information to the right people at the right time, the system is harnessed with high information and data security that guarantees protection from any unauthorised access.

In addition, S-AWARE provides easy-to-use tools for surveillance centre operators for their daily work:

• Improved information sharing between different surveillance centres and stakeholders
• Guide to more structured ways of handling different situations
• Comprehensive overview of security and safety situations at Helsinki Underground
• Collecting information from multiple security and safety systems
• Presenting information in one common graphical user interface (GUI)
• Providing statistics to improve resource planning
• Creating an overall understanding of security and safety requirements by enabling better reporting tools.