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ISSUE 17 THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC TRANSPORT MAGAZINE Mobility90 •

Turin’s automatic metro currentlyoperates over a 9.6km line routewith 15 stations. Its fleet carriesabout 80,000 passengers a daywith a headway of two minutes atpeak hours. To keep pace withrising ridership, works are under-way to extend the line south tototal 13.2km and 21 stations.The system has expanded rapidlysince opening in 2006, butGruppo Torinese Trasporti (GTT),the company responsible for build-ing, operating and extending thesystem, is successfully keeping aneye on its passengers, trains andstations.

VIDEO SURVEILLANCE WITH REAL-TIME WIRELESS TRANSMISSIONTURIN METRO CASE STUDY

Requirements

The metro fleet is made up of 58Automatic Light Vehicles (VAL)by Siemens, each 26 metres longand composed as shown below

by a double married-pair consist,i.e. four cars totalling 52 metres.Trains can reach a maximumspeed of 80km/hr and carry up to440 passengers.The video surveillance system,

built 15 to 18 metres under-ground, monitors stations, thefleet, technical rooms and tunnels.It is designed to meet two mainrequirements and handle ninedifferent scenarios.

The first requirement is real-timesecurity management of passen-gers on board: central security roomoperators are able to assess whatis happening on trains, e.g. alarms,accidents or panic. The second

car (13m)

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involves analysing incidents ‘afterthe event’ by viewing recordedfootage. This allows the police tomonitor criminal acts or vandalism.The on-board video surveillancehandles the following scenarios:1. On-board intercom activation:in this case the central securityroom operators obtain a completevision of the whole vehicle fromwhere the communication began2. Evacuation handle activation:here room operators obtain anoverview of the whole vehicle tounderstand why the handle waspulled3. On-board fire or smoke alarm:room operators have a completeview of the whole vehicle or,more likely, the whole train, in

order to understand the situation4. Fire or smoke alarm in morethan one train: room operatorshave the maximum number oflive video streams per vehicleinvolved, whether in the same partof the tunnel or not5. Train stopped in tunnel: opera-tors view the whole train to avoidpanic and give the right advice6. More than one train stoppedin the tunnel: operators obtain themaximum number of live videostreams per vehicle involved,whether in the same part of thetunnel or not, in order to avoidpanic and give the right advice7. Train returning to stabling:operators have a full view of thewhole train to avoid the risk of pas-

sengers remaining on board,accidentally or for criminal intent8. Real-time control of suspiciousbehaviour: operators can switchbetween live images9. Control of suspicious behaviour‘after the incident’: operators cananalyse different recorded images.

VIDEO-CONTROLLEDAREA

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Mobility THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC TRANSPORT MAGAZINE ISSUE 17 • 91

Technology & architecture

Altogether the surveillance systemarchitecture – stations, tunnels and

trains – comprises a total of 851cameras:Technical Centre, CollegnoThis is equipped with 22 externaland 7 internal fixed cameras, plus

7 PTZ cameras (Pan Tilt Zoom,200°/sec, 150mm lens). All thefootage is recorded for 7 days bothin the lobby and the CentralSecurity Room.

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Front line desk in Central Security Room

StationsOn average there are 32 fixed cameras per sta-tion, although the amount varies, e.g. PortaNuova has 60. The video streams are hard-ware digitally encoded with MPEG4 algorithmin the station itself and then transferred withan IP/Ethernet optical ring backbone. Allstreams are recorded in the stations 24 hoursa day for 7 days, while in the Central SecurityRoom displayed streams are recorded for 7 days.

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Mobility THE EUROPEAN PUBLIC TRANSPORT MAGAZINE ISSUE 17 • 93

By designing the metro with an eye to thefuture, GTT has avoided the need for retro-fitting. In addition to making valuable time andcost savings, the operator is able to focus itsresources on fine tuning the system, ratherthan simply keeping it up to speed. Since2006 a management software provided byCARL Transport has been used to maintain theVAL fleet and fixed equipment in the net-work. As well as providing a complete systemconfiguration via system modelling, it alsomanages workshop activities, i.e. routine,preventive and corrective maintenance

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POZZO STRADA MONTE GRAPPA RIVOLI RACCONIGI BEMINI PRINCIPI D'ACAJA

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TrainsOn board there are four fixed cameras per vehi-cle. The streams are hardware digitally encodedwith an MPEG4 algorithm in the train itself,

then transferred in real time via IEEE802.11gwireless protocol. All the streams are stored in thetrain for two days, while those delivered to theCentral Security Room are stocked for seven days.

TunnelsThere are approximately 70 cameras (150mmlens) wired to the nearest station, where the videostreams are managed the same way as for the sta-tion cameras, plus four cameras for each fan sink.

The Central Security Room has two operatorworkstations with a graphic user interface fordisplaying and controlling each of the above-mentioned cameras. By simply ‘dragging anddropping’ from the metro map of the station,the operator can display live images on themonitor wall. This is 4 X 1.8 metres in diam-eter and made up of 28 LCD displays. Thereare also two arrays of 2 x TB RAID5 disks forrecording the 28 images projected.

Resolution

Video stream resolution is 4CIF both for trainsand stations, while the number of frames persecond (fps) differs. In the trains, video streamsare coded at 6fps to guarantee sufficient band-width for continuous streaming of live footagefrom two complete trainsets, i.e. 16 videostreams. All the streams flow in the IP/Ethernetoptical ring backbone and are hardware decod-ed in the Central Security Room from MPEG4to analog, then displayed on the monitor wall. The network backbone comprises a doubleredundant, 10Gbps optical ring with aSpanning tree protocol that recognises thetopology, OSPF protocol for routing and PIMprotocol for Multicast routing.

Eyeing the future

Since Turin Metro was built to quadruple in size,priority was given to flexibility and modularity rightfrom the start. And such foresight has paid off. Forexample when the Turin police requested accessto video footage recorded inside the metro system:since the overall network architecture is a Big-IPLAN, the task proved simple and rapid, taking onlya couple of days. It involved creating a geograph-ic link between the nearest metro station andpolice headquarters and providing the latter witha workstation similar to those installed in the MetroCentral Security Room. Hence the police canselect and view real-time footage from stations,trains or tunnels independently

Alberto Forchino, GTT All illustrations ©GTT SpA – unless marked

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