One of the first annual signs autumn is well underway is that dreaded tannoy announcement on a wet weekday morning, telling you that the rail network is operating a revised ‘leaf fall’ timetable. This year it happened in early October.
While a few leaves on the line provide me with the inconvenience of additional minutes to my journey, this autumn the rail network is facing a number of other major challenges that might severely disrupt services – and even cost lives.
The UK rail network operates approximately 7,000 level crossings on public and private land across Britain. In 2009-2010 there were over 4,500 recorded incidents of pedestrians and motorists misusing these crossings, including over 400 ‘near misses’.
While such incidents typically result in about ten casualties each year, it’s still a major concern for Network Rail as it negatively impacts service delivery, and also has the potential to harm the public’s perception of the company (the recent high profile television advertising is testament to how seriously this issue is taken).
Rise in copper theft: a challenging issue
Another very different but every bit as challenging an issue at the moment is the rise in copper theft, which is now a daily occurrence and a serious matter of concern for the British Transport Police.
It seems that while the Euro collapses and millions are seemingly wiped off the value of the stock market each day, the price that copper can command on the black market has never been higher.
The difficultly in securing level crossings, safeguarding copper and other assets is all-too-obvious. The fact that the rail network is so widely distributed across the UK means it’s simply uneconomical to employ 7,000 officers to man every crossing, and thousands more to patrol a storage yard 24/7.
In fact, the cost to install ‘traditional’ barrier signalling security measures at a level crossing is estimated to be in the region of 600,000 Euros for every new crossing.
Surveillance cameras and video analytics
One viable remedy to help improve the safety and security of assets distributed across vast areas may be the use of surveillance cameras and video analytics. However, this isn’t a new idea and is certainly not one for which I’m about to take the credit!
Back in 2008, Transnet Freight Rail – the leading provider of logistics and the largest rail operator in South Africa – took the decision to implement a large-scale, end-to-end IP video surveillance system that would enable the rail operator to monitor and record images from thousands of IP video surveillance cameras deployed throughout 670 sites across the country from just three centralised Control Rooms. In doing so, the operator would be able to proactively protect its highly distributed assets over thousands of miles.
A similar project was rolled out (if you’ll pardon the pun) in 2009 by the BNSF Railway Company which operates one of the largest North American rail networks. It implemented a hybrid system to manage a mixture of IP and analog cameras for the protection of its rail yards, intermodal facilities, bridges, vehicle parks and other secure locations.
Of course, these are large-scale implementations and I’m not suggesting a ‘sledgehammer to crack a nut’ approach to solve the problem of level crossing misuse and copper theft.
However, strategically deploying analytics-enabled cameras ‘linked’ to the Control Room at level crossings and storage yards would be an affordable and effective solution.
Triggered when a security incident takes place
Clearly, cameras provide a visible deterrent, but by using video analytics it means that the surveillance team in the Control Room isn’t expected to look at every image from every camera at every crossing. Cameras can be set up to be triggered when an event takes place (such as a vehicle trying to navigate a closed barrier), at which point an alert is automatically and instantly raised in the Control Room, presenting the operator with real-time footage.
The operator can then take the appropriate course of action, which may be to contact and notify the driver of the oncoming train that there’s a situation unfolding up ahead.
The captured footage from these incidents could then be used for training and to identify trends in behaviour that may be countered, whether via adverts on our TV screens or used for more direct action.
The innovative use of video analytics has the potential to help solve many of the challenges facing safety and security teams large and small. Sadly, though, analytics aren’t yet able to remove the leaves from the line…
Jamie Wilson is security marketing manager (EMEA) at NICE Systems
