Background
For several months, there had been many incidents in Italy where the road barriers of railway crossings had been vandalised. Consequently, these barriers could not be opened and closed on time and trains had to pass these crossing at drastically reduced speeds. This led to substantial cumulative delays in the daily train timetable, with numerous complaints by train users.
There are about 400 of these railway crossings in the City of Milan, and roughly about 8,000 in the whole of Italy.
Challenges
The request by Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A., the national Italian railway organisation, was to define a lighting and surveillance system that would automatically inform the local police station of any acts of vandalism and also identify the vandals themselves. The solution had to be able to survey the complete scenery on both sides of the barriers, as well as record and store data efficiently.
Sony solution
Sony’s network cameras SNC-EP550 were chosen by system integrator OWLS AG to provide detailed surveillance at one of the railway crossings in Milan. The cameras were integrated as part of a pilot installation at one of the crucial and vandalised railway crossings, with a view to the solution being adopted across the region.
Working in conjunction with OWLS’ lighting solution, two embedded Sony SNC-EP550 720p/30fps PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) cameras survey the scene from either side of the barrier. Concealed within two ATHINA LEDrofit48 streetlights, the cameras work in tandem with Cogvis arealVIS software to enable the automatic detection of persons in-frame. Pictures and videos are then sent to a central station at the local police department either via a LAN connection or a wireless variant.
Results
With the success of this initial pilot project, the Sony and OWLS solution can be rolled out to further crossings in the Milan area and other parts of Italy. The issue of vandalism at railway crossings is one that is found internationally, and the solution could be implemented in other countries too.