ADVERTISING FEATURE
Railway vandalism: Never mind the drones; double down on CCTV and video
James Somerville-Smith, EMEA channel marketing leader at Honeywell Security Group, examines the risks and solutions facing railway service providers.
R
ailway vandalism can include a wide range
property like fences, bridges, signs and tracks, or even stealing metal to sell. It’s expensive, can cause delays and disruption, and compromise safety. Typically split into
two major
categories – damage to track infrastructure and surrounding areas, and damage to train carriages – it has been the scourge of European transport for many years.
When it comes to tackling vandalism, there are major challenges facing Europe’s railway operators. Chief among them: the sheer size and scale of Europe’s railways – more than 120,000 miles of track across the region – mean it would corners of the network using video surveillance. Inevitably this means that mission-critical sites are protected permanently, and others are left exposed to criminal activity.
Another issue facing rail operators is downtime. The process of cleaning train carriages that and time-consuming, as the spray paint must be removed by experts in specially designated areas owing to the noxious mix of chemicals used. Inevitably this leads to a reduction in the number of trains in service, and a drop in the number of passengers using the railway. Metal theft can also lead to delays and cancellations as sections of the track need to be replaced. for train operators, who lose revenue from lost tickets and have to cover the cost of removing penalties imposed by the regulator for failing to meet the agreed service level.
either. Recently police in Paris arrested an Australian couple who allegedly caused around railing across Europe. The couple brought more than 20 spray cans to Europe with them, and Africa, metal thieves stole nearly 10km of track,
18 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 15
causing an estimated $2.3m of damage. In the UK, cable thieves caused 36 hours of disruption to rail services in the Birmingham area. And this is in the last six months alone.
Last year the German national rail network, plan to use spy drones to track down and arrest estimated €7m per year in cleaning fees. Over the summer, France’s RFF announced a €15bn infrastructure upgrade across its rail network designed to – amongst other things – protect it from cable theft and vandalism. In Britain, Network Rail and the British Transport Police down on railway vandalism, which costs more than £25m per year.
There is still work to be done. For real and genuine progress to be made towards eliminating vandalism on our railways, it is vital the key stakeholders involved make the investments needed to protect train carriages,
metal theft, cable theft and other kinds of criminal damage. Bluntly, the adoption of standard security technology systems is still much lower than it should be right across the rail industry.
transport security industry over the past few years. Major developments in the image the right solution, vandals can be accurately latest surveillance systems are explosion-proof, can be monitored centrally to protect railway lines, vehicle parks, storage yards and remote compression technology is also improving, allowing for many hours of video to be retained.
that allow security teams to pre-empt
vandalism before it actually takes place are also be embracing more readily. These solutions are capable of spotting suspicious behaviour – for example, a would-be thief scaling a railway fence or a group of youths lurking beside an out-of-service train carriage – and alert the security team immediately to the threat. In addition, by deploying analytics via a video view of a space, it’s much easier to spot a person behaving in an unusual way. Imagine how much lower cleaning fees would be if train operators could pre-empt a potential vandal before he or she attempted to spray paint on the side of a carriage.
Finally, a huge leap in the reliability of wireless technology means temporary structures across the network can be ‘locked down’ more easily. This is particularly useful when it comes to protecting sites undergoing maintenance or construction work, which present an open invitation for vandals and thieves. If a site is undergoing repair work, it is cost-prohibitive and often physically impossible to install a wired security system to protect it.
In conclusion, major media outlets right across and innovative experiment to reduce railway there is cheaper, more scalable, equally as today that a large percentage of Europe’s railway companies haven’t yet fully embraced. It might not be a drone, but huge leaps in the wireless technology over the past few years mean there’s never been a better time for railways to invest in security solutions – or, incidentally, a riskier time to be a railway vandal.
James Somerville-Smith
W:
www.security.honeywell.com/uk/ FOR MORE INFORMATION
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108