IRSE News 140 Dec 08.pdf

SECTION NEWS
York Section
The Chairman, Andrew Smith, welcomed 23 members and eight
guests to the first Technical Meeting of the 2008/09 session on
Thursday 9 October.
Andrew introduced the speaker for the evening, Claire Porter,
Account Director, Thales –TS and invited her to present her paper
“Integrated Communications & Security Systems – A Global
Perspective”.
Claire began by explaining the challenges to the Railway;
Terrorism, Crime, Technology Development, and Changes to the
Passenger Environment and how the Telecommunications Industry
has faced those challenges.
Attacks at various railway installations throughout the world
demonstrates a changing profile of terrorism designed to attack
multiple targets, cause mass casualties and maximise public anxiety.
These incidents have left the operators with a dilemma in that how
far do they go to protect the public by taking security measures.
Passenger security is important to passengers on the Railway. On
the New York subway the ridership has increased but reported crime
fell and it is generally agreed that improved security contributed to
passengers feeling safer and to more willingness to travel by subway.
Technology development now means that it is now possible to carry
more data, process more inputs and provide more information. The
changing passenger environment means that operators are
increasingly using complex networked systems to combine travel
information to passengers with advertising and news.
Two case studies, the East London Line and Dubai were
reviewed. The East London Line project is an existing railway being
upgraded to form part of the new London Overground network whilst
Dubai is a new metro currently being constructed. The objectives for
the London Overground focus on making it a more secure
environment for passengers, some of which impact directly on the
telecommunications system; such as Oyster ticketing at all stations
Derailment at Maltby
Photo: RSSB
investigations undertaken by RAIB in its first three years.
The most common category of accident investigated is derailment,
and the frequency of incidents on Tramways and Heritage Railways is
high in comparison with their route mileage.
A total of 90 reports have been published, all of which are
available on the RAIB web site. 517 recommendations have been
made, the vast majority of which have been accepted by the operators
concerned.
A wide ranging question session touched on topics such as
comparisons with accident investigation in other transport sectors and
other parts of the world, the differences between Scottish and English
law on evidence, and responsibility for follow-up of RAIB
recommendations.
Ian Mitchell
IRSE
to avoid fare evasion; more help points, CCTV and passenger
information systems and new trains with the latest security
features. The radio system is being changed to GSM-R with
three base stations used to provide coverage. The security
and information system operates over a WAN/LAN network
and is used to support station management systems; CCTV;
lineside and station SCADA; access control; retail telephony;
passenger information system; public address and clocks.
The station management system provides an operator
interface to control passenger information systems; public
address systems; CCTV with digital recording; help points;
SCADA for lifts and escalators and access control. The Dubai
Metro is part of an integrated transport plan designed to
reduce congestion and improve travel times. They required
a network operation and monitoring centre to manage
communication links, automatic train supervision, traction
power and monitoring, environmental management and
station operations management. The radio system is TETRA
(Terrestrial Trunked Radio) and the transmission system
uses a multi-service network. The Operator Control Centre
(OCC) controls wayside functions on the track, in stations
and depots, as well as collecting alarms and events for the
managed systems. The on-board systems use a Wi-Fi
infrastructure to provide video communication, public
address, passenger emergency systems and a passenger
information system. Each station uses between 10 and 30
cameras with local video recording but all views are available
at the OCC via the multi-services network. The telephone
system is based on voice over internet protocol (VoIP) linking
the OCC with stations and depots. It is also used to provide
emergency call box facilities for passengers.
In conclusion, changes in the environment and advances
in technology are driving the pace of change with modern
telecommunications for railways. The changing security
environment is driving the need for video, intelligent
surveillance systems and intrusion detection systems all of
which present interesting challenges in terms of how and
where to manage data. In the case of managing data
remotely they have significant impact on the bandwidth
required of the telecommunications transmission system.
Steve Creighton, Andrew Smith, Sean McDonald, Adrian
Moss, Quentin MacDonald, Phillip Wiltshire and Paul Taylor
took part in the question and answer session that followed.
The Vote of Thanks was given by Steve Crieghton of Thales
who sponsored this meeting.
Solution to
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IRSE
NEWS Issue 140 December 2008 25