COIMBATORE: The Tamil Nadu Forest Department has floated a tender for setting up an artificial intelligence system to prevent elephant deaths on the railway tracks between Madukkarai and Walayar in Coimbatore district.
The State government has sanctioned Rs 7 crore for the project. The last date for submitting the tender bid is September 8. According to sources, the forest is straddled by two railway lines in the East-West direction, which pass through the Madukkarai forest range for 1.8 km and 2.8 km respectively. The tracks have numerous hot spots for elephant crossings, which have resulted in six train collisions and in death of 11 elephants, since 2008.
Based on the elephant crossing frequency, a vulnerable sector of 13 km of tracks has been identified and the forest department, along with the Ministry of Railways, has planned to use an AI-based, autonomous surveillance system in the area, to warn officials about elephant crossings. The warning would be communicated to the railway authorities using suitable wired/wireless communication interface.
The problem area would be divided into three zones — from centre of the track to about 50m on either side will be red zone, the next 50m will be orange zone and further 50m will be yellow zone. A hooter (acoustic) and luminous alert would be set up at every sensor tower and one in the console room.
If an elephant enters the yellow zone, an alert will be generated in the console room and in the particular sensor hooter and luminous. The track watchers and forest guards will be alerted simultaneously. If it enters the orange zone, alert message will be sent to the concerned forest guards, forester and the forest range officer/ station master. If it enters the red zone, alert will be sent to all forest officials up to district forest officer and divisional engineers of railways and through them to the loco pilots, with details of the location of the animal and its distance from the track. Further, the hooters and luminous in the towers would alert correspondingly when the elephant enters orange zone.
Speaking to TNIE, TK Ashok Kumar, district forest officer, said, “Forest department is jointly working with the railways to install AI-based model to prevent elephant deaths. After the tender is allocated, as per our plan, the work will commence within two months. Once AI is installed, elephant movement can be effectively tracked.”