Challenges and solutions for security and seamless authentication services in air-rail multimodal travels

Nowadays passenger’s travels are often multimodal. For example, a passenger may start its travel from home by using a car sharing service to reach the local train station and from this the nearest airport. And there may be multi-leg trips (i.e., stopping at intermediary places before reaching the final destination) and the passenger may use further modes of transfer.

In the depicted scenario, multiple stakeholders and domains are involved, such as:

  • passengers (including PRM, people with reduced mobility requiring assistance)
  • airlines and railway companies
  • airport and train stations
  • ground operators
  • shops and dining

 

Requirements and challenges

To deliver their services, information (including personal and sensitive data) is:

  • collected
  • verified
  • (re-)shared

by Transportation Service Providers (TSPs).

 

The above-mentioned data processing operations can be limited, among the others by processes in place, limits pertaining the technological infrastructure, or lack of control over the shared information. All in all, this limits the capabilities provided by the services offered to the passengers (with impact to the passenger experience) or made available for the improving the TSPs operations.

Some of the challenges are related to the:

  • Need for re-authentication among multiple stakeholders
  • Manual operations for identification and authentication including incorrect entries
  • Siloed knowledge in connected domains among carriers, operators, and service providers
  • Discontinuous access to ground services, tedious connection and waiting time

 

The E-CORRIDOR approach and the Airport-Train Pilot solutions

In E-CORRIDOR the Airport and Train Pilot aims at tacking these challenges by exploiting the features of the E-CORRIDOR framework and the services designed for it. The use cases identified in the Pilot span from seamless passenger experience to identity management and improved airport operations.

 

“E-CORRIDOR offers distributed, edge-enabled and privacy-aware data analytics services thanks to its secure, collaborative and confidential framework for information sharing and analysis.”

 

Solutions designed for the Pilot cover:

  • Seamless, robust, and privacy-aware authentication:
    • Multi-factor authentication based on biometrics
    • eIDAS connection for a pan-European identity management of the passenger’s data
  • Situational awareness and passenger flow management:
    • Privacy-aware analysis of camera feeds for security, efficiency, and crowd management
    • Localization and wayfinding services for passengers (as well as PRM and assistants)
  • Bring Your Own Device – based digital meet and greet services (to improve the passenger experience)
    • Through the mobile enrollment at home
    • Digital-kiosk for privacy-preserving preference matching
  • Smart, intermodal, and secure airports (through data sharing with edge-hybrid computation)
    • Connection with multi-modal Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) for cross-sector exchange of threats and vulnerabilities
    • Controlled data sharing in a privacy-preserving manner