NFR Announces Agreement with RailTel to Reduce Elephant Deaths

Guwahati: The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) and RailTel Corporation of India Limited signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Monday.

A memorandum was signed to install an intrusion detection system (IDS) in order to prevent train-elephant collisions.

The NFR has taken the initiative to place IDS in key locations in order to stop and detect the movement of wild animals, particularly elephants, as they approach the tracks.

The MoU was signed by RailTel’s Eastern region Executive Director Zakir Siddiqui and NF Railway’s Chief Communication Engineer G R Das.

The AI-based system will employ existing optical fibres as sensors to detect the movements of wild animals and notify control offices, station masters, gatemen and loco pilots.

It detects the presence of elephants on the track in real time using a fibre optic-based acoustic device that operates on the theory of dialysis scattering phenomena. The AI-based software can track unusual movement over a 60 kilometre stretch.