Connecting event security staff with event-goers to reduce the terrorist threat
Following the Manchester Arena bombing and subsequent terror attacks in London of 2017, the UK Government Office of Security and Counter Terrorism within the Home Office sought to encourage innovation to improve crowd resilience. Key areas of interest from the call include improving the detection of threats from explosives and weapons within a range of crowded places with high foot-fall and so reduce the chance of such future attacks happening again. DASA was tasked with engaging the UK technology community and successfully solicited a wide range of proposals for innovation and research into this challenging task.
Telaugos is proud to be a part of one of the winning consortia, collaborating with other partners in the BAR Associates network to help Krowdthink adapt its venue-based communication and social platform, the Krowd®, to integrate venue security staff with the crowd they are charged with keeping safe. Our solution innovatively combines a secure social-engagement app with features to enhance safety and security operations within high foot-fall spaces that are Wi-Fi enabled. It enables threat, event, venue and safety information to be shared via mobile devices, transforming 'the crowd' into a 'virtual sensor' to effectively identify threats and easily respond via alerts.
Its use is intended to support the UK Government Crowded Places Guidance which identifies that we all have an important role in keeping ourselves safe. The Krowd makes this simpler and more accessible by combining integrated security features into a secure and private event app that both enhances customer experience at events and enables the crowd to keep personally safe. Instead of solely relying on security staff to keep us safe, we enable active crowd participation in keeping themselves safe.
This same approach also provides a simple way to report minor crimes or concerns to on-site staff who can quickly respond to enhance the event, venue or festival experience.
The deterrent effect on terrorists is potentially transformational; instead of a terrorist focussing on finding surveillance camera blackspots and security guard patrol gaps, they now need to worry that anyone with a smartphone using the Krowd could be reporting their suspicions. The aggregated crowd alerts create a powerful insight to an emerging threat, assisting security staff to respond rapidly and pre-emptively.