Video surveillance system on Barcelona’s metro set for an upgrade

Barcelona Metropolitan Transport (TMB) has announced the renewal of the on-board video-surveillance system on Barcelona’s metro trains, which will use technology from GMV.

TMB currently runs a metro fleet made of various train series, each fitted with different video-surveillance systems. They all use analog technology and therefore suffer from various degrees of disruption. Consequently, the company have implemented an upgrading project to install a video-surveillance system on a total of 149 trains from eight different series.

These trains will run on lines L1 – L5 and L11 of Barcelona Metro.

The project comprises the supply of 300 video recorders, 300 communication nodes, 600 antennas, 760 video coders, 740 Ethernet switches and 540 IP cameras. This new system will also be integrated with existing CCTV systems, maintaining a total of 2,038 analog cameras.

The core of the system is GMV-designed digital recording equipment which can capture images in full HD resolution, with the capacity of replay and simultaneous exporting. The recorder guarantees ONVIF compatibility, enabling recording searches, parametrised deletion, exporting, protection and automatic management of obsolete recordings, in a standardised way.

Each metro train will also carry two recorders on-board, working in redundant mode: providing a high-availability recording system. Each train will be fitted with an on-board ring-redundancy multiservice Ethernet.

The network will have two communication nodes in redundant architecture, concentrating the on-board information from other systems too. Through a wireless link this will then be passed on to TMB’s operations centres.

The train-to-ground link will use Wi-Fi and 4G/LTE technology, choosing the most appropriate channel at each moment to suit the train’s location. Real-time video broadcasting to ground is also an included function, so videos from all trains along the line can be viewed from any of TMB’s control centres.

An on-board display terminal will be present in both driver cabs for real-time supervision of any of the unit’s passenger zones; increasing the level of safety.

For a while, the new system will run alongside the existing video-surveillance systems to guarantee a seamless transition.