“People should feel comfortable moving through public spaces,” says Rosie Richardson, the Product and Strategy Director of software specialist Createc. “And if we do it really well, you will never notice we’re there.”
Createc has developed a product called Situate that uses LiDAR sensing to scan public spaces, such as train stations and airports, without capturing images. Artificial Intelligence is then used to spot patterns of unusual or troubling activity, plus hazards that may require a member of staff to intervene.
Everyone who passes through a crowded space is assigned a small dot that follows their movements on a screen. The system provides an alert if the path an individual takes is deemed to be different from what is considered normal. This allows security teams to zoom into a flagged incident using CCTV cameras.
The system aims to make public spaces safer for women and girls, by detecting loitering and following by other passengers. It also looks for situations when a person is putting themselves in possible danger, such as running along a platform edge or standing too close to a rail line.
In addition, Situate identifies if a space is about to become overcrowded, and can look out for suspicious behaviour that threatens everyone’s safety.
Createc took part in the Station Innovation Zone at Bristol Temple Meads, which is delivered by Connected Places Catapult in partnership with Network Rail and funded by Innovate UK. The programme supported the company to develop and test the passenger tracking technology in a live station environment, and Createc has subsequently been invited to join the programme’s scale-up accelerator.
“We have now won commercial contracts worth around £1 million, including at major transport hubs such as London King’s Cross station and a UK airport, and hope to achieve £10 million turnover within a few years as this product can scale very quickly,” says Rosie.
“Connected Places Catapult helped us to win the King’s Cross contract by giving us a live testbed when we really needed it, and gave us support to expand our network within rail.”Rosie Richardson, Product and Strategy Director, Createc
“The Catapult is supporting us in moving from a great offer to something that is commercially viable. The support goes way beyond normal grant funding: we get access to specialists and a mine of information, plus I get the opportunity to network and speak at industry events.”
The company’s crowd monitoring system was first developed eight years ago in response to a call from the Ministry of Defence for ideas to identify abnormal crowd behaviour, following the Manchester Arena attack. Through the Station Innovation Zone, the technology was given a chance to be trialled in a railway environment for the first time to improve passenger safety at platforms.
Rosie adds that the technology can play a role in any large space that people move through, including public squares, shopping centres and sports grounds. “The challenge is where to focus our attention first; our roadmap over the next five years extends beyond rail and hopefully will take us to other countries.”
She is excited to be showcasing the system at InnoTrans to help “put Situate on to more of a global stage” and move beyond being an innovation in rail and aviation in the UK. “I’m really looking forward to learning from the show, and meeting people I wouldn’t usually meet.
“It's been a whirlwind of a year,” adds Rosie, who this year has been interviewed by broadcasters including the BBC, Sky and ITV about the service. “It seems that this technology is having a moment, and there is a huge amount of traction from customers. We continue to develop the product and add new functionality.”
“We improve people's experiences from how safe you feel within a crowd, to detecting individual behaviours of concern.
“If we make just one person feel more comfortable accessing public spaces, I feel we've done our job; although I hope it's not just one – we want to do that at mass scale.”
Createc and two other programme participants on the Station Innovation Zone scale-up accelerator – Journey Alerts and WeWALK – will be exhibiting in the UK Pavillion (stand 560G) at InnoTrans 2026 from 22 - 25 September.
Find out more about the Station Innovation Zone.
