Bhubaneswar: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has adopted an innovative step to check elephant deaths on rail lines in its jurisdiction, especially in sensitive locations of jumbo movements in Khurda Road and Sambalpur Railway Divisions in Odisha.
ECoR has decided to install Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in elephant movement areas to prevent the death of wild elephants due to train hits.
ECoR said that Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had directed all zonal railways to work towards inclusive development in all areas. Acting upon this direction, ECoR has adopted the IDS system for saving the life of elephants. Presently, ECoR obtained sanction of Rs 79.12 crore for installing IDS at sensitive locations of elephant passing zone and elephant corridors.
Six railway sections consisting of 200 kms stretch under Sambalpur and Khurda Road Railway Divisions have been taken in to hand in the first phase. These are Maneswar-Bamur, Turekela-Lakhna, Arand-Arang Mahanadi, Norla-Theruvali in Sambalpur Division and Kapilas Road-Rajathgarh-Angul, Rambha-Ganjam & Nayagarh-Porjanpur Railway Section under Khurda Road Railway Divisions of ECoR.
Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) had first taken this project on experimental basis in Chalsa-Hasimara Railway Section of the Dooars area under Alipurduar Division and between Lanka-Hawaipur Railway Section under Lumding Division. After success of the pilot project, NFR has now installed Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in all its elephant corridors in Assam and North Bengal in order to prevent the death of wild elephants due to train hits. The pilot project has already been immensely successful in saving the lives of many elephants approaching railway tracks from being hit by trains.
The IDS will help to detect wild elephants those are approaching towards the railway tracks and alert railway officials to help to avert elephant deaths. The 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. It uses a fibre optic-based acoustic system working on the principle of scattering phenomenon to sense the real-time presence of elephants on the track.
The IDS can monitor unusual movements up to a stretch of 60 kms. 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.
The system’s primary application is an IDS (Elephant Detection) based on Distributed Acoustics Sensing (DAS) technique, which should Locate and detect the presence of elephants near the track so that speed of the trains in the sections will be reduced. The system shall be capable of sending alarms to the Loco Pilot unit (Tablet with internet facility) via SMS/Internet with GPS tag, providing information about the location of elephants. The system shall detect and locate moving elephants near or on the track areas of ballasted track.
The communication unit will display elephant movement audio visual alarm on local display. It will also send information to central DAS server for notification to relevant Assistant Station Manager/Gate man/Field Users over railway existing communication network OFC/Railnet/Ip-MPLS or LTE network.
The project aims at developing an affordable solution for large-scale monitoring and early warning of elephant intrusion. After analysing the signal processing methods, the most suitable technique for real- time detection of elephants is chosen and simulated.
