India to deploy indigenous coastal surveillance system

[sudhir007]

India to deploy indigenous coastal surveillance system

Bangalore: An indigenously built coastal surveillance system would be deployed in 46 strategic western and eastern locations in the country from this November to check intrusions from sea and counter such threats, officials said today.

Being developed by the Bangalore-based defence PSU Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), the system includes radars and electro- optic and meteorological sensors and would be mounted on light- houses or towers at these locations, company officials said.

"It will give complete operational picture of the sea up to 20 km deep into the sea. So, all targets can be brought into a screen and they can be seen from regional centres," BEL's Director (R&D), I V Sarma told PTI here.

"We will start deploying the stations (at identified locations) by November or so," he added.

BEL's Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Kumar Datt said the system has already been demonstrated at two locations and the trial phase had been completed.

The company is now awaiting an order -- valued at more than Rs 500 crore -- from the Indian Coast Guard, which would maintain the stations with BEL's technical support.

Under the strategically-important project, officials said 46 locations have been identified along the western and eastern coasts where stations would be be set up.

The round-the-clock system would enable authorities to collect "radar and visual output".

"The concept is to look into the sea, and identify intrusion attempts," Datt said.

BEL sources said a centre would be set up in New Delhi which would get information gathered by the surveillance system, while there would also be some regional centres.

The entire software for the coastal surveillance system has been developed by BEL's central research laboratory located in Ghaziabad.

BEL officials said the company is expected to complete the process of installing the surveillances system by June next year, after which the second phase would begin to cover "each inch" of the coast.

So, within three years, India is expected to deploy the system along the entire coast.

Datt said BEL was in the process of deploying an intelligent CCTV surveillance system in the Parliament under a Rs 30 crore order.

BEL officials said this project involved integration of over 400 cameras on a IP platform with an integrated command and control centre.

 

[Trichy]

well gud work, i home the surveillance team will work 24/7 without any sleep

 

[SwAggeR]

A chink in India’s coastal security armour is that unlike bigger vessels (300-tonne ones and above) that are mandatorily fitted with automatic identification system (AIS) — which provides for automatic locating and tracking — the thousands of smaller vessels operating along the country’s shores are largely unaccounted for, necessitating physical authentication of their identity.

This is set to be passé, if the multi-sensor network developed by the communication cluster laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is chosen to replace the predominantly Israeli sensor suite in the Coastal Surveillance Network steered by the Coast Guard during the project’s Phase-II expansion.

The fully indigenous network — known as the Integrated Coastal Surveillance System — capable of mounting real-time surface and subsurface surveillance over the coastal seas is in the final stages of pilot-testing and trials at coastal Kochi in Kerala, confirm defence sources.

The system has taken about four years to attain a certain level of maturity.

Assembly and trials

Dehradun-based Defence Electronics Application Laboratory (DEAL) has developed the Indian AIS while the coastal surveillance radar for the package has been developed by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) in Bengaluru, and the electro-optical sight by the Instruments Research and Development Establishment (IRDE) in Dehradun. The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) in Bengaluru has developed the software and the Kochi-based Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) has put together the underwater sensors (the diver detection system) besides coordinating the project assembly and trials.

Nearly 150 boats — in the under 20-tonne category — operating along the Kochi coast have been fitted with the Indian AIS (IAIS) for trials. Radars have been set up at Aroor, Malippuram, and Fort Kochi.

“The beauty of the project is that it’s all done in-house. The trials have given encouraging results, with just the fine-tuning left to be done now. The network can be scaled up for deployment along the country’s 7,500 km coastline,” revealed a top source.

“Given the asymmetric threats posed by smaller craft, a tracking system for vessels regardless of their size is a hugely positive development. Better still, if the system is indigenous, developed by DRDO labs and productionised for trials by the Machilipatnam unit of Bharat Electronics,” he added.

Once operational, the IAIS can be integrated with the IMO-mandated AIS. While the prototype of the IAIS made for trials cost about Rs.25,000 apiece, volume production will render it far cheaper and affordable to boatmen, said another official.

In return for equipping their boats with the IAIS, fishermen will get weather and fish shoal data from INCOIS (Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services) relayed to the system, which will double up as a distress alert beacon, he pointed out.


Indigenous integrated coastal surveillance soon - The Hindu