Reducing Fatality Disruptions with 8K Forward Facing CCTV Optimised for Remote Access

Right-Time performance is key to railway customers having a good journey on the railways and fatalities are a major source of disruption. These incidents cause lines to be closed whilst British Transport Police (BTP) investigate and the railway is readied to reopen. TRUST data extracted by the National Disruption Fusion Unit of Network Rail (NR) show that, on average, there have been approximately 350 fatalities pa on GB railways causing 790,000 Delay Minutes pa, equating to 2,300 Delay Minutes per incident.

Project partner Train Operating Company Avanti West Coast states that, after a suicide, services typically recover relatively quickly, but after an Unexplained fatality, services typically do not recover until the next day, disrupting passenger and freight journeys and reducing customer confidence in the railways.

After a train encounters a fatality, the driver must report the incident to the NR signaller who informs BTP. BTP establish whether the incident was a "Suspected Suicide" or was "Unexplained" by interviewing the driver. If the driver did not have clear sight of the victim or is traumatised and cannot provide a reliable statement, then, if available, BTP can review the Forward-Facing Video of the event from the train.

If the involvement of other parties cannot be ruled out, then BTP have to declare the incident Unexplained and, on average the requirement to treat the site as a crime scene, take witness statements and record the scene adds 1h45m (70%) to the time taken to resolve the incident.

Declaring a fatality as a suicide can therefore depend on the Forward-Facing Video, but the limitations of the current Full High Definition standard of Forward-Facing Video cause quality problems. Recordings are notoriously poor in anything other than bright lighting, and real-life conditions (dark shadows on platforms, an overcast day or twilight) render footage unusable.

In response, this project will use emergent 8K video technology, Cloud technology and advanced Artificial Intelligence image recognition to provide BTP with high quality video they can forensically analyse quickly. With better recordings, more incidents that would be judged as Unexplained due to current technology limitations, will correctly be deemed as suicides, reducing hand-back time and alleviating wider customer disruption.

Our consortium, led by Rail Innovations, and comprising video software company One Big Circle Ltd, University of Surrey, Avanti West Coast and train owner Angel Trains Ltd, will apply innovative technologies and novel techniques to enable the deployment of 8K Forward-Facing Video.