The project developed a prototype surveillance system based on autonomous, smart monitoring devices that capture data only upon the occurrence of an incident, potentially dangerous for the passengers (like an explosion blast or the triggering of the fire detector). When triggered, these devices propagate the triggering to their neighbouring devices and send an alarm. Successively, they upload the captured data to the central station providing a wide (space and time-wise) coverage of the potentially hazardous incident. Finally, they provide a dedicated bi-directional communication channel between the emergency centre and the affected areas. If, for any reason, they don't succeed to establish communication, they serve as 'black boxes', preserving the data until they are physically recuperated by the authorities.

The proposed system will be modular both in terms of triggering and communication capabilities, so as to be of very wide applicability and utilise / complement any existing suitable infrastructure. A system based on blast and fire triggered monitoring devices is proposed as a pilot implementation that will prove the validity of the concept in two very different surface transport applications: a metro (or bus) network and a large ferry vessel.