PRASA & Huawei Elevate South African Rail Security with AI & Smart Sensing

South Africa's extensive 38,000 km railway network, crucial for passenger and cargo transport, faced severe challenges. Aging infrastructure, coupled with rapid urbanization, led to a surge in security incidents including illegal railway occupation, theft, and damage to public property. Traditional perimeter protection methods, such as vibration cables and microwave barriers, proved inadequate. They suffered from high rates of false or missed alarms, system instability, and isolation, complicating alarm verification and driving up maintenance costs. The complex environmental factors (vegetation, pedestrians, wind, rain, animals) further compromised reliability, creating an urgent need for a more robust and intelligent security solution.

PRASA partnered with Huawei to implement an Intelligent Railway Perimeter Protection Solution. This innovative approach leveraged Huawei's leading technologies, including Intelligent Fiber Sensing and Video AI, to establish a comprehensive, end-to-end railway perimeter security system. The core of the solution is a light-vision linkage system integrated with a centralized management platform. This platform provides real-time map displays and facilitates the detection, reporting, and confirmation of warning events, creating a closed-loop business process for enhanced security. Furthermore, the solution is supported by AI large models, enabling rapid adaptation to diverse environmental scenarios. PRASA also plans to extend this reliable system, incorporating fiber sensing and video double verification, for future applications like buried cable protection along the railway lines.