"The present proposal aims at the development of a prototype surveillance system based on autonomous, smart monitoring devices that capture data only upon the occurrence of an incident, potentially dangerous for the pas-sengers (like an explosion blast or the triggering of the fire detector). When triggered, these devices propagate the triggering to their neighbouring de-vices 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 com-munication, they serve as “black boxes”, preserving the data until they are physically recuperated by the authorities. This innovative system is meant for the unattended surveillance of public transport and other public spaces. It serves primarily for the prompt and reli-able situation awareness during the early, most critical emergency phase, thus greatly facilitating the overall crisis response. ASPIS promises to overcome the drawbacks of classical, centralized surveil-lance by offering a prompt and wide coverage, space and time-wise, on events potentially hazardous to public safety in a cost-effective way without being excessively intrusive to the individual activities. In fact, it constitutes a very good compromise between the need for surveillance / monitoring and the respect of privacy and civil liberties of the citizens. The proposed system will be modular both in terms of triggering and com-munication capabilities, so as to be of very wide applicability and utilise / complement any existing suitable infrastructure. A system based on blast and fire detector triggered monitoring devices is proposed as a first implementa-tion, aiming at the protection of surface means of public transport from events involving explosions or fire."