ARGOS TransGaz Trial

The ARGOS FP7 Project successfully organized the 1^st Field Trial in Bucharest, Romania deploying the CI protection solution under development at the premises of the Romanian company TransGaz. The system testing and demonstration in a properly designed field trial took place between 22^nd and 25^th of June 2015. The trial was attended by several End Users originating from Romania as well by critical infrastructure protection operators and security experts invited from different EU countries.  The scenarios used during the trial dealt with several different types of attacks against a gas plant or installations, in this case the TransGaz facility in the outskirt of Bucharest. For this purpose a mesh network of different types of sensors including vibration and video sensors, as well as Wake-up Cameras were deployed in a buffer zone outside the perimeter of the facility in order to extend the protection of the critical infrastructure (distribution station, gas pipeline) beyond its perimeter from potential intruders.  

The First Scenario dealt with physical attack to the Pipeline network (extended/linear type of critical infrastructure) along the gas distribution network while the Second scenario focused to the attack at the installation of the gas distribution station. In both cases the ARGOS systems had to identify the abnormal behavior of the attackers, detect the location and transmit a relative alarm to the system’s Human Machine Interaction (HMI). The ARGOS control system and the alarm reception center was placed in a hotel in Bucharest at a distance of kilometers from the facility.

The results of the field trial used to test the capabilities of the individual sensors and sub-systems of the ARGOS solution as well as for validating the performance and the improvements of the data fusion module and the rule-based engine were successful. The system is proved able to detect timely the attack, before the intruder reach the security perimeter of the installation. Moreover, the capability of the system to discriminate between persons, animal and vehicles has been validated, while it was also tested against false alarms and missed alarms cases.

The invited experts/observers evaluated positively the ARGOS solution based on fusion of information from a variety of sensors, as well as the adaptability and scalability of the solution to address different cases of critical infrastructures. They also commented on the compliance of the approach to existing legislative aspects and good practices concerning physical security and in particular as regards strengthening and extending surveillance and security beyond the physical perimeter of critical facilities.