Indian Railways Setting Up Centre Of Excellence For Modern Signalling Systems In Secunderabad

Indian Railways is setting up a centre of excellence (CoE) for providing expertise and technical inputs for modern signalling systems in train operation at Indian Railways Institute of Signal Engineering and Telecommunications (IRISET) in Secunderabad, Telangana.

To begin with, the CoE would work for Kavach, the indigenously-developed accidental prevention system, to make it competitive for export purposes.

Kavach, developed from the train collision avoidance systems, is being installed on a 2,500 km rail network in the first phase.

Access to global expertise and development of knowledge portals are immediate requirements of Kavach besides setting up a Kavach Lab at CoE.

There is a need for further upgradation of the systems to match the international standards so that it can be exported to other railways in the world, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Estimated to cost about Rs 34 crore, the CoE is expected to provide inputs for competence building, research, design and standards, best practices, support, solutions and knowledge management.

CoE is being envisaged as a facilitator for transformation of processes and evolving better inter-departmental functions to provide solutions through collaboration with stakeholders and work on problem and incidences.

CoE would impart formal education and skills training to Indian Railways personnel, teachers and industry besides providing inputs content management involving curriculum, subject notes, lecture and multi-media content for virtual labs, physical labs and at work sites.

CoE at IRISET shall initially complement the technical team of Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO). However, later on the knowledge bank and data which has been generated at RDSO as part of the Kavach development will be subsumed in CoE.

Besides log data analysis, diagnostics and simulations and case studies, CoE would also develop systems for application designing and system configuration.