Railway Minister Directs to Explore the use of Modern Geo-Spatial Technologies

In a significant move to make Unmanned Level Crossings(UMLCs) safer for road users thereby avoiding accidents thereat, Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has directed the Railway Board to explore the use of Geo-spatial technologies for this purpose. Under such technologies which combine Global Positioning System(GPS), Geographic Information System(GIS) and Remote Sensing, an alert message will be flashed automatically in the mobile phones of all the road users who are in the vicinity of an Unmanned Level Crossing about the approaching train. With the use of this kind of technologies, the accidents at UMLCs may be minimized / controlled to a large extent thereby saving precious human lives. This step will be in addition to all the ongoing measures being taken by Railways to control accidents at UMLCs.

In pursuance of Railway Minister’s direction, a High Level Meeting was held in Rail Bhawan today wherein the representatives of Safety Directorate of Railway Board, Research Designs & Standards Organisation (RDSO) ( the research arm of Ministry of Railways), Center for Railway Information Systems (the IT arm of Ministry of Railways) and Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO) participated. The meeting decided to take expeditious necessary steps and prepare an action plan.