Local Australian rail systems may be less likely candidates for its use, either because they require significant additional security infrastructure or because the transport networks themselves are not sufficiently interconnected.

But where the infrastructure is in place and the network is complex, then such networks are likely candidates for a solution that helps detect and sometimes even solve or prevent incidents and crime.

"There are certainly lots you can do with correlation of the data that the system extracts," Haddy says, "so it's possible that we could automatically correlate certain information more than we do at the moment."

Missing that airport novel might end up being an extremely valuable contribution to transport security, and data processing generally.