In recent years, elephants deaths on railway tracks caused by train hits had shaken the conscience of the people of the country. Just as the death of a frontline forest worker, after being trampled by an injured elephant in Karnataka, has. Unplanned development directly collides with conservation causing their wildlife habitats to shrink, thereby forcing the animals to stray into human areas. So also, the extension of rail networks through elephant corridors for greater connectivity has been the reason for several train-elephant collisions.
Hence, both the Railways and the Forest ministries sat down to find a permanent solution to this and work jointly to implement it. The need for an alert system that would go off automatically if wild animals are near the track was felt, so that an incoming train could be stopped in time to avert a collision. Accordingly, Railways came up with the Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and tested it successfully in a pilot project spread over West Bengal and Assam, in collaboration with the forest departments.
To understand how the Intrusion Detection System works, Indian Masterminds spoke to Principal Executive Director, Gati Shakti, Railway Board, Mr. Anil Kumar Khandelwal, a 1987-batch IRSE officer, who explained in detail, and also informed that the pilot project has been a complete success.
WHAT IS IDS?
The Intrusion Detection System or IDS is a method to avert train-elephant collision. Indian Railway has been taking many initiatives to prevent and detect movement of wild animals, especially elephants, approaching the tracks, and installation of IDS in important sections is one of them.
Its objective is to generate real-time alert on the occurrence of safety hazards that might result in accident or serious disaster. Like, for instance, intrusion by wild animals, landslides, river bank erosion, slope destabilization, digging activity near track, and flat wheel of locomotives, carriages or wagons.
Mr. Khandelwal said, “The system is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and existing optical fibres will be used as sensors to identify movements of wild animals at locations and alert control offices, station masters, gateman and loco pilots.”
HOW IDS WORKS
It uses fibre optic based acoustic system working on the principle of dialysis scattering phenomenon to sense the real time presence of elephants on the track.
The optical fiber cable (OFC) distributed acoustics sensing is based on Rayleigh scattering phenomenon. Vibration/external sound waves hitting the OFC cable cause changes in the reflected pulses, and reference signature is captured for the ideal condition.
In case of elephant intrusion, a signature is captured for classification and analysis of a particular event. Real-time traces are compared with reference signature, analysis is done, and then an alarm is generated.
One unit can monitor 30 km to 40 km of the track without any limit and generate alarm. The remote unit is connected to a central server over Ethernet Link (IP/ 4G).
Provision of alarm is made in Station Master office, Level Crossing Gate, and in Divisional Control Office. The types of alarms are audio-visual alarm for Assistant Station Master and loco pilots, geo-location display on the central server, train tracking event for level crossing gate in case the gate is open.
Mr. Kandelwal said, “The AI based software can monitor unusual movements up to a stretch of 60 km. In addition to it, the IDS will also help in detecting rail fracture, trespassing on railway track, and alert about disaster mitigation due to unauthorised digging near railway tracks, landslides near tracks, etc.”
SOLUTION COMPONENTS OF IDS
The IDS is made up of seven components – Remote DAS Unit, DAS Server, Control Office Dashboard, ASM Display Unit, Hooter Interface Over Quad Cable, Loco Pilot Display Unit, and Mobile Application. Each component has its distinctive function. Let’s find out:
Remote DAS Unit: It consists of an optical sensing unit and communication interface for sending real time trace to central/local server.
DAS Server: This is the main processing unit with high performance computing server storage, centralised database, software algorithm and networking interface. This server can handle multiple remote DAS units based on server configuration and software licenses.
Control Office Dashboard: Real-time geographical display of entire route showing elephant movement and other events.
ASM Display Unit: Station Master audio visual display unit for alerting elephant movement within the station master area.
Hooter Interface Over Quad Cable: This interface shall be installed at stations and in case of any alarm/event/movement, a hooter will be triggered to level crossing (LC) gate over quad cable.
Loco Pilot Display Unit: This will provide audio-visual alarm to train driver over 4G/LTE interface wherever available.
Mobile Application: Other stakeholders can monitor alarms over mobile network.
SUCCESS OF PILOT PROJECT
The Pilot Project has already been immensely successful in saving lives of many elephants approaching railway track from being hit by trains.
Mr. Khandelwal said, “After 100% success of the pilot project of IDS that was undertaken by Indian Railway in the Chalsa-Hasimara section of the Dooars area under Alipurduar Division in West Bengal and Lanka-Hawaipur section under Lumding Division in Assam, it has now been decided to install the system gradually in all other elephant corridors spread over N.F. Railway.”
IDS WINS PRESTIGIOUS SOUTH ASIA AWARD
The success of IDS (Intrusion Detection System) installed in Lumding and Alipuduar divisions of NF Railway can be gauged by the fact that it has won the PMI South Asia Awards for the category ‘Micro project of the year’ for the year 2023.
This is for the first time that any Indian Railway unit has got this award since its inception in 2009. Major industrial units like L&T, Reliance, Tata Projects, Siemens, Bausch, IOC, BPCL, EIL from entire South Asia region had participated in this annual event.
MoEFCC SUGGESTS EXPANSION OF IDS
Meanwhile, concluding that it is the best available system to detect the movement of elephants close to railway tracks as of now, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has suggested to Railways to install IDS in more sensitive stretches identified by them and the Wildlife Institute of India (WWI). Senior ministry official, Mr. Ramesh Pandey, informed Indian Masterminds that the “MoEFCC has already sanctioned two works in East Coast Railway and Northeast Frontier Railway, and is ready to sanction more wherever required.”
