NEW DELHI: To enhance highway safety, energy efficiency and maintenance of street lightings, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is set to roll out a centralised web-based street light monitoring system (CCMS).
The cloud-based platform will provide real-time monitoring and control of street lighting systems. It will also support automatic switching of lights, early fault detection, energy-saving verification and performance analytics.
According to the ministry, pilot projects have already been successfully implemented in Varanasi and Hyderabad, demonstrating the viability of the technology-driven monitoring framework.
The MoRTH has now issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) and implementation framework for the CCMS, which is applicable to highway stretches managed by the ministry, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL).
The initiative follows directions issued during senior officers’ meetings in the ministry, where the need for a unified monitoring mechanism was discussed.
Directions have also been issued to the officials in the concerned units of the ministry, NHIDCL, and NHAI to ensure implementation of and compliance with the SoP for all existing and under-implementation, including future, highway development projects.
According to the Indian Roads Congress (IRC) guidelines, lighting on national highways is provided only at certain points such as toll plaza areas, rest areas, truck lay-bys, bus bays, grade-separated structures, interchanges, flyovers, underpasses and overpasses.
The scope of lighting in a project is decided based on the requirement assessed during the preparation of the Detailed Project Report (DPR) from safety and other technical considerations.
The officials said the new arrangement is expected to bring greater transparency, accountability and data-driven decision-making in the management of highway lighting assets across the country, besides helping in energy consumption and electrical parameters monitoring.
Under the system, the officials will be able to view the status of lighting assets through dashboards, which will also show the number of working and non-working street-lights in states, districts and corridors.
The users will be able to submit feedback, which will be routed automatically to the concerned project authorities. To address technical issues, a three-tier escalation mechanism has also been put in place.
