NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen), the Dutch rail authority, is one of the world's busiest rail systems with 25,000 employees operating over one million passenger journeys every day. NS is currently operating over 385 full service rail stations throughout the Netherlands and running approximately 5000 train journeys every day. To protect so many stations, it was neither practical nor cost effective to locate CCTV monitoring staff at every station and so a centralised remote monitoring system was developed.
A nationwide fibre network had already been put in place in parallel to the rail network and so an IP video solution was the obvious choice for CCTV surveillance. NS employed local consultant Movares Nederland B.V. to source the best IP solution. Following a comprehensive evaluation IndigoVision's IP Video technology was chosen for its high-quality video, low video latency and future-proof architecture. It was important that the operators could not tell the difference between IndigoVision's digital video and equivalent analog images. Low video latency also ensured effective camera PTZ control, even across the large distances between the remote monitoring centre and the stations. NS were keen to embrace future technologies such as analytics so future proofing was also an important requirement.
Over a period of 18 months over 200 of IndigoVision's 8000 transmitter/receiver modules were installed on 12 stations around the network, with the largest single installation of 96 cameras. Over the coming years the system will be expanded to accommodate more and more stations. Each 8000 unit was installed with a camera in a special outdoor housing to provide a weatherproof, vandal deterrent IP camera package. The 8000s convert the analog camera feed to DVD-quality digital video for transmission over the 100Mb/s Ethernet fibre network. Data from the remote monitoring centre is also decoded by the 8000 for local PTZ control.
Without changing the existing installed hardware, NS can add the recently launched advanced analytics package from IndigoVision. This will give NS a wide range of additional features such as Congestion Detection - to automatically alert operators if platforms get too busy; Virtual Tripwire - to detect if people fall onto the tracks; and Object Detection - to detect if bags have been left unattended at the stations.
