Minimizing Cable Theft in Railways Networks

Minimizing Cable Theft in Railways Networks Leveraging IoT to build a comprehensive noninvasive copper cable theft detection system

Transportation | Whitepaper

Contents

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Abstract

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Executive Summary

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Global Issue and Law Enforcement Efforts

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Using IoT to Address the Problem

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Proof of Concept

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The Cyient Thought Board

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References

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About the Author

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Transportation | Whitepaper

Abstract With high global copper prices, cable theft incidents continue to plague the railways and result in losses amounting to millions of dollars per year. These thefts are particularly high in sparsely populated areas that cannot be easily monitored. IoT technology enables real-time monitoring of assets and can also be used to address the issue of copper theft. By partnering with an experienced service provider who has industry expertise and a deep understanding of emerging technologies, rail companies can deploy a modular solution that non-invasively detects the location of cable cuts instantaneously to alert authorities and prevent further damage or downtime.

Executive Summary While there is a wide variety of cables available today, single to multi-core copper conductors are used for railway signaling and telecommunications purposes. This is because they are robust enough to withstand extreme physical conditions and are rated fairly to carry the required voltages, current, and frequencies.

However, the theft of metal for its resale value increases when worldwide prices for scrap metal rise and the railways, world over, are a favorite target for the copper in their cables.

Experts suggest that cable theft is one of the biggest challenges faced by the railway industry after terrorism. Cable theft costs Britain’s economy an estimated £770 million a year. A rough estimate by Indian Railways reveals that, every month in the last three years, train timings have been affected at least 16 times owing to theft of cables along the tracks1. Hence, there is a dire need to detect, alert, and reduce theft-related delays and costs.

At Cyient, we envisaged a solution using the Internet of Things (IoT) and translated our thinking to create a functional prototype that could noninvasively detect the location and time of a cable cut, promptly alert the authorities, provide an approximate length of the cable cut, and show the live status of junction boxes on a Web application.

A non-invasive solution is also expected to eliminate all certification-related issues.

Cyient envisages an IoT-based solution to non-invasively detect location, length, and time of a cable cut, alert authorities and show the live status of junction boxes on a Web application.

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Copper conductors, being robust enough to withstand physical conditions, are extensively used for railway signaling purposes. The theft of copper cables installed along the railway tracks has become a major cause of concern for the railways all over the world, as this leads to track circuit failure—a situation in which train services are disrupted for hours. The adversely affected train timings cause a huge revenue loss to railways.

Copper cable theft is a growing crime that increases when worldwide prices for scrap metal rise (as seen below in Figure 1). This is driven dramatically due to the rapid industrialization in India and China. The metals most commonly stolen are non-ferrous metals such as copper,

aluminum, brass, and bronze. However, even cast iron and steel are seeing higher rates of theft due to increased scrap metal prices.

Copper cables alongside the railway tracks are an easy target as they are generally far from homes and people, and there are thousands of miles of tracks to choose from, which makes them virtually impossible to protect.

Copper may be stolen from electric poles, power lines, substations, and company storage yards. Before resale, the plastic sheathing and outer skin are usually removed from the cable, because raw copper is more valuable, and sold to scrap dealers.

Global Issue and Law Enforcement Efforts We carried out a study on the types of railway equipment stolen and categorized them into buckets that included loss of life, accident, crash, and loss due to theft. Along with copper cables, other equipment stolen in large quantities are fish plates, pandrol clips, clamps, rail bars, and batteries. But cable theft is a bigger and recurring problem for global railway systems and is also a growing menace across other industries such as telecom and utilities.

Cable theft causes power outages that result in inconvenience to customers and entails high cost of repair and replacement for businesses.

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Considering the significant increase in copper cable theft, law enforcement efforts have been initiated by several countries such as Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Russia, South Africa, the UK, and the US. In India, cases of cable thefts are lodged under Section 174-C of the Indian Railways Act, 1989.

Law enforcement agencies in some of these countries have tied up with scrap dealers and local citizens to prevent copper theft by increasing their awareness. And yet, despite these efforts, cable theft continues to be an issue and a pain point to be addressed.

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Using IoT to Address the Problem IoT is one of the top disruptive technologies transforming life, business, and the global economy. Often referred to as the “Internet of Everything,” IoT is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity to enable objects to exchange data over the Internet.

At Cyient, we leverage our domain experience, knowledge of hardware, firmware and software, and the right vendor partnerships to create a full-fledged IoT solution.

Non-Invasiveness

Station Level

Central Server Level

For the solution to be effective, it needs to be competely “non-invasive” to avoid any certification issues and ensure a quicker time-to-market. Our solution is based on the principle of non-invasive detection, and uses

the requisite hardware and communication technologies for detecting the cut, alerting, and providing an approximate length of the cut. Considering the distance between the junction boxes, LoRaWAN would be the best fit, but as a proof of concept and to showcase the workability of the solution, our engineers used a different technology for building the functional prototype.

Overall Architecture With the junction boxes placed at a distance of 2.5 kilometers on either side of the station and separated from other junction boxes by 500 meters, we planned to place sensors for every 250 meters both below and above the ground. The overall architecture of our solution is depicted in Figure 1.

Predict potential theft areas / time / location Analytics Processing Unit

Central station

AWS cloud

Alert pre and post failure stations for scheduling trains

Railway Station 1

Railway Station 2

XBee Coordinator + Raspberry Pi 3

XBee Coordinator + Raspberry Pi 3

Cable Junction Unit 1

Cable Junction Unit 2

Site Level

XBee Node 1

Cable theft area

XBee Coordinator + Raspberry Pi 3

Cable Junction Unit 3

XBee Node 2

XBee Node 1.1

Railway Station 3

XBee Node 3

XBee Node 2.1

Staff alerted for quick action If staff is close by, can catch suspect on first cut alert Fig. 1 | Overall architecture 03

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Proof of Concept Based on our discussions with SMEs from Indian Railways, we have considered the Indian scenario for building our proof of concept as shown in Figure 2 below.

With sensors placed around the junction boxes, we were able to monitor the live status of the cables. The moment there was a cut at any point of the cable, two levels of verification were carried out and an alert in the form of an SMS and/or email was triggered. The notification alert would mention the location and the time of cut along with an approximate length of the cable cut.

Cyient developed a test bed setup of the IoT solution for non-invasive cable theft detection as shown in Figure 3.

The developed Web application can be accessed through the Internet with the right credentials. All the incidents of cable theft are captured instantly and pushed onto the cloud, thereby giving a snapshot of the cable thefts at country/state/district/zonal levels at any point of time.

Tests on our concept have yielded positive results and efforts are currently on to make the solution more robust by addressing device

sensitivity and ruggedness, and testing it in real conditions.

Currently, Cyient is extending its offering by developing a generic and modular IoT solution that can be applied for legacy rolling stock and railway infrastructure. This solution will consist of a set of intelligent devices with multiple sensor inputs as well as communication units that transmit collected data to the cloud, where it will be used for dashboards presenting realtime status of assets and for big data analytics.

Main station 500m

500m

Fig. 2 | Preliminary device hookup

Tests on our concept have yielded positive results and efforts are currently on to make the solution more robust.

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Fig. 3 | Test bed setup of proof of concept

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The Cyient Thought Board

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Minimizing Cable Theft in Railways Networks

How do copper component thefts impact the railway industry?

Instant monetary losses

Unplanned downtime

Compromised passenger safety

Reinstallation costs

Additional labor expenses

What components of railway infrastructure commonly get stolen for copper extracts?

Pipes

Alternating current systems

Cables and wires

Tubes

Coils

Rooftops

What benefits of IoT make it efficient in addressing copper cable theft?

High-speed messaging

Endpoint management

Real-time analysis

Command and control

Noninvasiveness

Cloud integration

What are the features of the PoC Cyient developed for Indian Railways to deal with this issue?

Web access to the monitoring application

Incidents captured in real-time

Cloud-access allows anytime, anywhere access of information

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References

About the Author

Source: http://www.macrotrends.net/1476/ copper-prices-historical-chart-data 2 Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/ moslive/article-2101462/Copper-cable-theftcosting-Britain-fortune.html 3 Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/ mumbai/cable-thefts-lead-to-disruption-oftrain-services/ 4 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_ theft

Narendra Kumar Sivalenka, PMPÂŽ is a senior manager at Cyient and is part of the Opportunity Management team in corporate strategy. With a strong affinity for new technologies and having more than 18 years of cross functional experience in the aerospace and marine domains, he is responsible for recognizing and driving new strategic opportunities by generating and developing ideas that transform into potential solutions.

He is an MBA and holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering.

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