Two of the city’s major railway stations will now be armed with a state-of-the-art security system.
As part of a nationwide drive by Indian Railways to enhance passenger security, Chennai Central and Egmore stations will get CCTV surveillance cameras, under-vehicle scanners and x-ray baggage screening devices.
On Thursday, Southern Railway became the first zonal railway to implement the Integrated Security System (ISS) being rolled out at select railway stations by the Indian Railways.
In Chennai, ISS facilities will be installed at five suburban terminals too — Basin Bridge, Chennai Beach, Mambalam, Tambaram and Tiruvallur. A total of 14 stations on the Southern Railway network benefit from the Rs. 41-crore ISS project.
The centrepiece of ISS is Under Vehicle Scanning Systems (UVSS) at 18 entry/exit points at nine major stations. It will monitor and records under-the-carriage images of vehicles in motion.
It also captures images of the vehicle driver and is equipped with a number plate recognition system.
The features of the CCTV surveillance system with 625 IP-based cameras include recording and play back, storing of video data for 30 days, video analytics like intrusion detection and left object detection.
The 295 x-ray baggage screening devices will have different tunnel sizes for different capacities of luggage while entry points will feature door frame metal detectors for personnel scanning, hand-held metal detectors and parcel scanners.
Explosives detection facilities will involve bomb suites, bomb suppression blanket and bomb basket for the detection personnel. Other facilities include vapour trace detector for vapour sampling and car remote opening tools.
