SAFETY & SECURITY

SAFETY & SECURITY DEPARTMENT

SAFETY & SECURITY DEPARTMENT

The Safety & Security Department is making a signi-fi cant contribution to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) through a concerted eff ort to guarantee the operational effi ciency and reliability of critical infra-structures. The department is committed to fostering the roll-out of leading edge technologies in the area of public administration - eHealth, eGovernment, eEnvironment - telecommunications, energy and transportation.

‘Safety’ is related to technologies and refers to the personal safety of individuals, which is directly or indi-rectly dependent on the proper functioning or availability of an information processing and/or autonomous system.

‘Security’ rather refers to the protection of informati-on and the prevention of any potential violation through unauthorized access to or alteration of personal infor-mation. Security may also refer to classical security techniques (surveillance) that are supported by informa-tion technology.

The research focus of the department is driven by four major trends in ICT:

1. the growing complexity of ICT systems2. increasing networking possibilities: machine-to-

machine (M2M) communications, internet of things, virtual infrastructures, etc.

3. industry trends towards open network architectures: standard protocols, third-party interfaces, etc.

4. a growing dependence of all applications on un-derlying ICT infrastructures: smart grid, smart city, eMobility (car2X), eGovernment, eEnvironment, eHealth, etc.

These developments are leading to a higher dependen-cy on technical systems and considerably higher risks in their usage. Therefore, the activities within the depart-ment aim to accomplish higher security and availability levels for critical national infrastructures through the use of Information and Communications Technology – technology, tools and methodologies.

THREE RESEARCH AREAS

In this context the research topics of the Safety & SecurityDepartment are organized into three Research Areas:

• Intelligent Vision Systems (IVS)• Future Networks and Services (FNS)• Highly Reliable Software and Systems (HRS)

SAFETY & SECURITY DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH AREA: “INTELLIGENT VISION SYSTEMS (IVS)“

Intelligent vision technologies constitute an essential pillar for innovative safety and security solutions. The IVS Area comprises the skills of more than 60 experts and all the Department’s image and video processing research.

The overall goal of the IVS Area is to transform the ever increasing amount of raw visual data into valuable infor-mation for future secure environments. Research and development spans the entire image processing chain, from the sensor through high-performance signal processing and image analysis to user interaction and visualization of results.

We focus on specifi c core competences:

• to enable advanced solutions for surveillance appli-cations through object-specifi c detection, tracking and counting algorithms, in conjunction with (semi-)automatic localization and calibration in multi-camera networks;

• to further develop 3D vision as an emerging robust visual sensing technology for manufacturing, autonomous and assistive systems; and

• to further strengthen our position as a leading technology supplier of high-performance vision

systems for industrial applications such as print inspection and large-scale surface analysis.

Work in the IVS Area comprises the whole spectrum from strategic research up to the realization of prototypes and targets three major fi elds of application:

• Surveillance and video security• Autonomous and assistive systems• Industrial inspection and quality control

SAFETY & SECURITY DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH AREA:“FUTURE NETWORKS AND SERVICES (FNS)”

ICT is the innovation engine number one and digitalization will progress at all areas of private and professional life. Sectors like the public health service, eGovernment, and emergency management are accessing today´s distribu-ted ICT systems. In the same extent as usage of these systems expands, dependence on them also grows. Heavy accelerating hacker attacks on distributed ICT-systems require new concepts for security. The increasing use of eHealth-Technologies poses new challenges in this sensible area for distributed secure and usable ICT for future patient centred treatment processes. Furthermore the fast advancing digitalization leads to an exponential

growth of available data volumes. Long-term accessibili-ty of this information and data over many decades is an unsolved challenge.

In this context the department is well established in na-tional and international research programmes, such as KIRAS (an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology) and the EU FP7 security pro-gramme. Along these lines, the AIT successfully initiated a national cyber security initiative (CAIS – Cyber Attack In-formation system) with all the important security national stakeholders under its leadership, and positioned itself successfully in the FP7 research framework programme.

Furthermore the AIT successfully initiated cooperati-on and partnerships with public service organisations, and industry and research institutions. For example, the AIT is now leading the national “Innovation Platform for Security”, and is represented in a number of international task forces and associations, such as PSCE (Public Sa-fety Communication Europe; International association of public security service organisations and ministries, EARTO/EUROTECH Security group (Task force of the Eu-ropean research organisations on security issues), and TeleTRusT (IT Security Association Germany).

SAFETY & SECURITY DEPARTMENT

In the framework of verifi cation and validation, software intensive systems require adequate testing in order to examine whether they work properly and fulfi ll speci-fi ed application objectives. The goal of the activities in this area is to reduce, via innovative methods, the eff ort associated with this process, whilst increasing software quality.

Furthermore this research area is focusing on the development of new software standards as well as new methods, tools or process approaches for ve-rifi cation and validation of highly reliable and save software and systems with special focus on auto-nomous systems (e.g. robotics, automotive, special-purpose machines, etc.). The core competences of the area are design, development, integration, and verifi -cation & validation of dependable and reliable systems. The main ambition is, to make autonomous systems safe, supporting the vision of convergence of autonomy and cooperation within intelligent systems.

These activities form an important basis for successfully positioning the AIT in the area of safety research. In this context, our proven test-case generation systems will be increasingly industrialized. This industrialization of re-

sults includes a newly established industrial cooperation with AVL – a leading national automotive supplier, parti-cipation in the national competence centre “The Virtual Vehicle”, which is engaged in the development of appli-cation orientated methods for vehicle development, and the insertion of our technologies in European platforms in the framework of several ARTEMIS (European tech-nology research platform which aims to help European industry consolidate and reinforce its world leadership in embedded computing technologies) projects.

RESEARCH AREA:“HIGHLY RELIABLE SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS (HRS)“

CONTACT

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

Safety & Security DepartmentDonau-City-Straße 1 | 1220 Wien | Austria

www.ait.ac.at/safety-security

DI Helmut LeopoldHead of Department

T +43 (0) 50550 - 4101F +43 (0) 50550 - 4150

helmut.leopold@ait.ac.at

Mag. (FH) Michael MürlingMarketing and Communications

T +43 (0) 50550 - 4126F +43 (0) 50550 - 4150

michael.muerling@ait.ac.at AIT

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