East Coast Railway Deploys Drones To Keep 24×7 Vigil On Its Entire Territory

Bhubaneswar: Due to the CoVID 19 Crises all over the world, most of the Nations have resorted to the Lock Down strategy to combat the widespread of Corona virus . Following the above, Indian Railways have also stopped the movement of Passanger Services. However, the Goods trains movement to transport Essential items are still being done to ensure uninterrupted supply chain of the items throughout the Nation. Due to the above crises there are some sections of ECOR which have got no movement or very less movement of the security personnel.

During lockdown assets like coaches, PRS counters, etc are out of sight being not in use, locked. This is in addition to assets on use – yards signalling infrastructure, stations relay rooms, goods sheds, wagon stock etc. RPF staff has to ensure safety of each of these assets, whether in use or not. As a large part of ECOR territory is under LWE influence areas, keeping an eye 24x 7 on all fixed & moving assets in addition to activity centres, is a challenge during lockdown. ECOR has, in a first on IR, deployed drones to keep a 24×7 vigil on the entire ECOR territory. These drones are deployed on instructions of RPF officers to optimize RPF productivity and effectiveness.

The Security Of unattended Rly Property and vital installations becomes very imp . Similarly due to this lockdown it is also necessary to ensure that no unauthorised Movement of the people takes place through Rly tracks . Since it is not practically possible to guard the huge assets and open rly tracks widespread all over physically, the concept of Security Patrolling through Drones has been introduced at ECOR . It is now operational at Vishakhapatnam , Khorda Road and Bhubaneswar and will be introduced at Puri, Cuttack as per requirement. Drone cameras will be operating with the help of the permission of State / Airport and Naval and Airport authorities so that the movements are fully monitored. They will capture the images of the track from the maximum suitable heights, communication links of 2 km approximately initially so that the image and video reached up to the Operator are clear to take follow up action. Besides the real time monitoring, we will store the data to create Video library for future references. Same time with the use of motor or push trolley the operator with RPF can move inside the section and cover the area also if required and immediately send message to the control room for immediate action and information can be passed to local police .