• Dr. Leon Hempel
• Lars Ostermeier
• Tobias Schaaf
• Dagny Vedder

EU Commission (FP7 - Security Research Programme)

February 2011 - March 2014

• SiTI, Istituto Superiore sui Sistemi Territoriali per l'Innovazione (I)
• University of Kassel, Institute of Economic Law (D)
• Kingston University, Digital Image Research Centre (UK)
• Tel Aviv University, The Interdisciplinary Centre for Technology Analysis and Forecasting (Israel)
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Centre for Law, Science, Technology and Society Studies (B)

• Prof. Dr. Charles Raab, University of Edinburgh
• Flughafen Berlin-Schönefeld GmbH
• Berlin-Brandenburg Aerospace Allianz e.V.

SIAM is an EU-funded research project that provides support to end-users in the assessment process of security measures and technologies (SMT). The overall objective is to create an Assessment Support Toolkit that takes the complexity of technologies, economic aspects, cultural differences and societal dimensions into account. SIAM worked to help stakeholders to cope with the increasing complexity of assessments by providing a systematic approach for assessing the potential impact of SMTs.

SIAM has been implemented by an international consortium from Germany, Belgium, Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The consortium consulted some of the leading European experts in security, surveillance and civil rights experts. Four in-depth case studies on SMT assessments in public transport systems have been conducted. Promoting participative security technology assessment procedures, conferences and user forums have been organised to present and discuss the results of the project for an early involvement of the perspectives of different stakeholders.

The Assessment Support Toolkit

SIAM has developed methodologies and guidelines to aid the assessment of security measures and technologies in the context of mass transportation facilities. Such assessments need to take into account different stakeholders and their particular needs, wants, and responsibilities; the nature of the particular travel- and security processes inherent to mass transportation facilities; and the related range of legislative, cultural, economic, technical, ethical and other societal impacts that should be considered, before a new technological solution is introduced into a mass transportation facility. As a major outcome of the project, the consortium has developed an Assessment Support Toolkit (AST).

The benefits of the AST that has been developed are pertinent and boil down to the following: (1) by inviting decision makers to answers sets of well-thought-out and scientifically tested questions the AST enables to anticipate a host of potential threats and costs that may jeopardize the introduction of security technologies and/or measures; (2) by requiring substantial evidence of testable effectiveness of such technologies and/or measures, unnecessary costs that have no added value are pre-empted, (3) and, finally, by referring decision makers to relevant legislation as well as ethical considerations, potential human rights violations and societal resistance, the AST allows to foresee major obstacles to the implementation of security technologies and/or measures and to prevent unwarranted trade-offs that jeopardize the legitimacy and effectiveness of such technologies and measures.

Interested visitors to this website can download the AST, a free software prototype which has been developed to support the assessment of security technology in the planning and acquisition phase. The system pursues a participatory approach, and builds on the key idea that relevant stakeholders and experts need to get involved at an early stage to provide different insights and perspectives on the impact of specific technological and organisational solutions. The assessment itself is conducted through a structured questioning process, and the answers given by the various participants contribute to an assessment report. The report makes apparent the levels of agreement or conflict on particular issues based on the answers given. In addition, various assessment scores are used to indicate the degree to which the experience, expertise and opinions of different stakeholders have been captured.

Download the SIAM Assessment Support Toolkit
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDMjco4x4wUd_RAazIAriKfS9QA1kxU7f

Download the SIAM AST Administration Console Manual

Download the SIAM AST Installation Guidelines

Download the SIAM AST User Guidelines

Download the SIAM AST Methodology Handbook

Watch tutorials for editing the AST database questions