MOBILIZE—Maintaining the operational safety and security of large railway systems in emergency situations

In this paper we describe the concept and ongoing work of the research project MOBILIZE, which addresses the operational safety and security of large railway systems to prevent sabotage and vandalism. Examples of such acts are manipulation of system components, intentional placement of objects on the tracks, theft of copper cables or damage to property such as graffiti on parked trains. The prevention of personal injuries resulting from crossing tracks or climbing on parked wagons and thereby getting too close to or even touching the overhead lines is also an important aspect. A permanent installation of video surveillance systems for the entire railway infrastructure is not feasible and, what is more, state-of-the-art video surveillance alone is currently not up to the challenges of monitoring very large areas completely. Therefore, MOBILIZE focuses on the development of a reliable portable system with multi-sensor modalities. In case of increased incidents in a specific region, the system can be deployed quickly and easily. The development of such a system raises questions that represent the main scientific challenges to be explored within MOBILIZE: which combination of sensor technologies is the most suitable to reduce false alarm rates to a minimum in practical operation, legal issues such as the changing regulations regarding the usage of drones, usability for the operator, integration into the operational procedures of the railway operators as well as future economic exploitation of the MOBILIZE project. The current paper focuses on the work done on ground-based visual sensors as well as their fusion with other sensors employed within MOBILIZE, and an assessment of their social impact.