The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has adopted an innovative step to check elephant deaths on rail tracks in sensitive locations. The development took place as Odisha reported 40 jumbo deaths due to train hits in a decade. ECoR has adopted these steps in Khurda Road and Sambalpur Railway Divisions.
According to the sources, the authorities are planning to install an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) in elephant movement areas to prevent the death of wild elephants due to train hits.
What is an Intrusion Detection System?
The Intrusion Detection System can monitor unusual movements up to a stretch of 60 kilometres and will help to detect wild elephants approaching the railway tracks. It will also alert railway officials to help to avert elephant deaths.
Utilising optical fibers as sensors, the technology aims to detect wildlife movements and promptly notify control offices, station masters, gatemen, and loco pilots. This innovative approach involves a fiber optic-based acoustic system that operates by leveraging the scattering phenomenon, enabling the real-time tracking of elephant presence on railway tracks.
The official informed that this system will also help in detecting rail fractures, trespassing on railway track, and alert about disaster mitigation due to unauthorised digging near railway tracks, and landslides near tracks.
The core function of this technology centers around an Intrusion Detection System (specifically, Elephant Detection) utilizing the Distributed Acoustics Sensing (DAS) method. Its primary objective is to pinpoint and identify the presence of elephants in close proximity to railway tracks, thereby prompting the reduction of train speeds in affected sections.
Notably, the system possesses the ability to dispatch alerts to the locomotive pilot unit through SMS or the Internet, complete with GPS tagging for precise location details. The system’s efficacy lies in its capacity to detect and locate mobile elephants situated in or near ballasted track areas, as explained by an official source.
Which routes will get IDS?
In the initial stage, attention has been directed towards six railway segments, encompassing a total span of 200 kilometers, located within the Sambalpur and Khurda Road Railway Divisions of the East Coast Railway.
These sections include Maneswar-Bamur, Turekela-Lakhna, Arand-Arang Mahanadi, Norla-Theruvali within the Sambalpur Division, as well as Kapilas Road-Rajathgarh-Angul, Rambha-Ganjam, and Nayagarh-Porjanpur under the jurisdiction of the Khurda Road Railway Divisions.
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, the official said.
(With inputs from PTI)