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Safety and surveillance on inland waterways

Rivers and man-made waterways – canals – have been used for centuries for inland transport of goods and bulk materials, as well as for pleasure.

As such, they are the water equivalent of roadways, but the key difference is that the `traffic' comprises ships, barges and boats instead of cars, trucks and motorcycles. So, for the same reasons that CCTV surveillance is used on land roadways it is also of great value in monitoring and controlling traffic on rivers and canals. This article discusses the increased use of rivers and canals for commerce and pleasure; the various criteria that determine the configurations and positioning of CCTV systems on inland waterways; and typical solutions.

Fall and rise of waterway use

The use of inland waterways for commercial purposes reached a peak in Europe during the industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But, as railways and, later, roads, began to improve, they became more economical than canals and rivers for transport. However, in the mid 20th century canals became popular again, mostly for holidaymakers, and a number of countries, notably the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, re-opened or renovated many of their canals. At the same time, some of these countries, particularly the Netherlands and Germany, increased the volume of commercial traffic, mainly with large, powerful state-of-the art barges that can carry dry or liquid cargoes up to 3000 tonnes. Another reason for the increased use is to reduce road haulage traffic and associated pollution.

Criteria for surveillance

The key criteria that determine size and configuration of CCTV systems for inland waterways are based on:

* Width and depth - decides traffic capacity and frequency;

* Whether for commercial or pleasure traffic or both;

* Number, type, size and capacity of locks;

* Whether locks are manned or unmanned;

* Whether locks are manually or hydraulically/electrically operated;

* Whether surveillance is needed at bridges, tunnels or junctions.

Upstream/downstream

The first three criteria also determine how far upstream and downstream from a lock cameras need to be located. If the traffic frequency is high and/or there is a high number of larger vessels and/or a lock size is relatively small, cameras would need to be placed at a greater distance from a lock than if these factors were otherwise. In other words, a situation with the above factors would mean that vessels could be queued for some distance from a lock, possibly a number of kilometers. Camera surveillance allows the person controlling the locks - the lockmaster - to know how many vessels are queued and the upstream or downstream distance. The type of camera used here would normally be fixed.

Connecting the upstream and downstream cameras to the central control room is best achieved using optical fibre cabling that enables maximum picture quality with no signal loss due to distance. An alternative could be wireless connection, but optical fibre is better for the reason stated. Moreover, installing optical fibre cabling is easier and less costly than alongside a roadway, mainly because canals have long, straight stretches with unencumbered banks.

Lock surveillance

Surveillance at a lock is necessary to ensure that the gates can be closed or opened at the right moment and to monitor vessels in the lock. In the latter situation monitoring is important to observe the rising or falling water level that may cause injuries to persons or damage to vessels, a not uncommon occurrence with tourists. Most large locks, especially those on commercial waterways, are staffed by a lockmaster and possibly an assistant. This is where CCTV surveillance offers a great advantage, since the lockmaster cannot see every detail of every location from the lock control cabin.

Various types of fixed or pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) cameras are used at the lock site, depending on its size and configuration, for example the position of the control cabin with respect to the lock basin and the lock gates and the respective distances between them. The advantage of a PTZ camera is that it can be moved in three axes to cover a wide area.

Typical canal lock surveillance system

A Bosch AutoDome camera mounted at the downstream end of the Bachhausen lock on the Rhein-Main-Donau (RMD) canal near Nuremberg in Germany The RMD, canal, opened in 1992, is 171 kilometres long and has 16 locks. Its link with the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers connects the seaports of Rotterdam and Antwerp with the Black Sea, a distance of 3500 kilometres

Video recording and control

CCTV surveillance of waterways and their locks is not just a matter of realtime monitoring. Recording of video images is necessary in the event of incidents, such as personal injury, damage to vessels or structures, incorrect opening or closing of lock gates, trespassing, vandalism, polluting (for example, fuel oil spillage), or dumping of garbage. Bosch provides a number of scalable solutions for video recording and archiving, based on its range of digital video recorders (DVRs) or, in the case of an IP-based system, network video recorders (NVRs).

The remote monitoring and control desk for the Mülheim-Hesse canal lock in Germany

Bosch's DiBos DVR, for example, employs MPEG-4 compression to provide superior images and make optimal use of available bandwidth and storage capacity. DiBos allows the connection of a total of 62 cameras - up to 30 analog and 32 network - to one system to give maximum flexibility and scalability.

Other features include digital recording at up to 50/60 frames per second (fps) and simultaneous playback, authentication of images for legal evidence, and advanced search facilities with smart motion search for easy retrieval.

Advantages of IP

Already being applied in major transportation projects, networked CCTV-based on IP technology is becoming the solution of choice for medium- to large-scale surveillance systems. The advantages of IP-based surveillance installations over conventional DVR CCTV systems include scalability - cameras can be added in increments of one, compared to 16-camera/channel steps for DVR; frame rate - any camera can be provided with any frame rate at any time; and storage capacity that can be easily increased by adding hard drives and PC servers.

Communication

Equally important as visual monitoring is audio communication between the lockmaster, other staff and the skippers of commercial traffic and boat owners. There are three possibilities. One is to use a public address and voice alarm system, horn loudspeakers with microphones provide two-way communication with vessels within earshot. The second possibility is to use marine UHF radio, which mostly applies to communicating with the skippers of commercial vessels. A third alternative is mobile telephony that, of course, requires knowledge of numerous different telephone numbers for each and every lock. It should be noted that not all locks are manned - some are controlled remotely and in groups of two or more.

Conclusion

CCTV surveillance is of great value to inland waterways for safe navigation of commercial and private traffic through lock systems. Bosch Security Systems has considerable knowledge of this market with at least 45 installed systems throughout Europe. Given that both commercial and tourist traffic are increasing, plus numerous countries' plans to extend or renovate canal systems, there is much potential for new business.

Some canal facts and figures

* The world’s longest and oldest canal is the China Grand Canal, between Beijing and Hangzhou. Started in 486 BC and completed in the 13th century it is now 1795 km in length and has 24 locks.

* The USA has 40 000 km of inland waterways, one of the largest being the Mississippi River System, which has 29 locks, typically 180 metres in length.

* The Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Seaway System is the world’s longest deep-draft inland waterway, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Superior – a distance of more than 3700 km.

* A new inland waterway system, linked to the River Thames, will be developed for transporting supplies and spoil by barge to and from the construction site of the 2012 London Olympics.

* The UK currently has more than 100 canal systems, mostly for pleasure craft. It was recently reported that British Waterways plans to increase canal commercial traffic by a factor of four to 6 million tonnes by 2010.

* The world's largest canal lock is the Berendrecht lock in Antwerp, which is 500 metres in length and 68 metres wide, and enables vessels of up to 130 000 tonnes to reach the harbour 70 km inland from the sea.

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