Western Railway to get 2,700 hi-tech CCTV cameras

In a bid to revitalize the security system at railway stations, the Western Railway has installed 2,700 improved versions of closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs) on Mumbai’s suburban section. These will now have a single ‘mother-ship, so to say at Mumbai Central called Unified Command Center, from where these shall be monitored. It will go live by Diwali as the last stage of works is expected to be completed.
This command centre will also help maintain a data log on technical and human failures and train running functions. This monitoring room will be the heart of monitoring these CCTVs. The data generated by these CCTVs will also get processed and would come in handy to analyze at this unified command centre.
According to WR officials, the Unified Command and Control Centre (UCCC) provides a centralized event management system, including monitoring, remote management and troubleshooting of the 2700 plus CCTV network on the Mumbai suburban system. These also include the 450 plus CCTVs that have face recognition having fed data of history sheeters. It will also indicate locations on railway station premises where there is overcrowding and even accumulation of garbage.
It also provides a seamless facility for Disaster Management with streaming information on almost every aspect of relevance, including flooding, rainfall, trespassing, communication with external agencies like the district and municipal authorities, police, fire, hospitals, navy, coast guard etc.
“Lacing a floor area of 587 sq.m, the UCCC is designed aesthetically with ergonomic features and modern, state of the art ambience. It comprises the Control Centre having segmented video walls in 9 columns and two rows and with 18 numbers of 55 inch TVs and eight control work stations for monitoring,” said a WR official.
Sources said that the UCCC would help them monitor train operations and safety, customer delight, passengers’ health, and their security. There shall be 16 workstations for continual improvement and application development. There is also a Disaster Management-cum-meeting room with a 30 seater conference facility having interactive audio, visual hardware and software tools.
The authorities sitting there will get comprehensive data and statistics on all the technical and human failures occurring daily, which would be used to strategize future action. Capacity expansion and developmental works along with management of fixed assets and rolling stocks etc. can also be documented.
“We are in the last stages of finishing this UCCC, for which the dashboard and other technical aspects are being given final touches. It will be ready before Diwali,” said a senior WR official. The UCCC is being constructed on an entire new floor to the Western Railway Division’s office in Mumbai Central at the cost of Rs 5 crore.