N. F. Railway bags PMI South Asia Award

Maligaon,, Sep 05, 2023, PIB

In a historic moment, Northeast Frontier Railway had bagged the PMI South Asia award for Micro Project
of the Year with its entry "Intrusion Detection System for saving elephant lives". N. F. Railway received the award
in a ceremony held at Chennai on 2 nd September, 2023. This is for the first time ever that any zonal railway under
the Ministry of Railways has bagged this award since its inception in 2009. Bharat Electronics Limited or BEL
bagged the runners up award. In 2022, the micro project award was bagged by IBM. Many reputed organisations
participate in this prestigious annual award every year showcasing their innovations. PMI South Asia Awards
Program is being awarded as a recognition for the project management community in the region.
Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is an eco-sustainable solution to protect elephants and improve
mobility in train operations. The system is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and existing optical fibres will be
used as sensors to identify movements of wild animals at locations and alert control offices, station masters,
gateman and loco pilots. It uses fibre optic based acoustic system working on the principle of dialysis scattering
phenomenon to sense the real time presence of elephants on the track. The AI based software can monitor un-
usual movements up to 40 km on either side of the main unit (i.e total stretch of 80 km). In addition to it the IDS
will also help in detecting rail fracture, trespassing on railway track and alert about disaster mitigation due to
unauthorised digging near railway tracks, landslides near tracks etc.
After 100% success of the pilot project on IDS that was undertaken by N.F. Railway in the Chalsa –
Hasimara section of the Dooars area under Alipurduar Division in West Bengal and Lanka – Hawaipur section
under Lumding Division in Assam, it has now been decided to install the system gradually in all other elephant
corridors spread over N.F. Railway for which a sanction of Rs. 77 crores has already been received. It is important
to mention here that the pilot project has already been immensely successfully in saving lives of many elephants
approaching railway track from being hit by trains. Bhubaneshwar based East Coast Railway (ECoR) has also
adopted this successful model for saving elephant over their jurisdiction.