Transportation Vertical Market Focus--Rota das Bandeiras

July 19, 2012
Brazil turns to ISS and PGLOBAL for a comprehensive highway safety solution

This article originally appeared in the July 2012 issue of SD&I magazine

Rota das Bandeiras Highway in Brazil belongs to Odebrecht Group, an infrastructure company with projects in many countries including the U.S. Since April 2009, the Rota das Bandeiras Concessionaire has been responsible for administering the Corridor Dom Pedro I, which is composed of five highways that serve the metropolitan area cities of Campinas and Paraíba Valley, in Sao Paulo, two of the most developed regions of the country, which represent 20 percent of the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These include: Dom Pedro I highway (SP-065); highway Romildo Prado (SP-063), which connects the Louveira-Itatiba highway José Roberto Magalhaes Teixeira (SP-083); Ring Road of Campinas, Professor Zeferino Vaz (SP-332), from Campinas to Conchal; and highway Engineer Constancio Cintra (SP-360), which connects the Itatiba to Jundiaí. Daily traffic on the highways managed by Rota das Bandeiras involves on average 117,000 vehicles. Rota das Bandeiras has more than 296 kilometers of highways under their control.

To manage events around the highway, Rota das Bandeiras bought video surveillance cameras with long-range lenses that can cover visually more than 80 percent of the highways. All cameras were installed at points meticulously analyzed according to level of incidents, risks areas, dangerous access, entrances and exits, etc., and images are transmitted to a central control center that has a custom Intelligent Security Systems (ISS) SecurOS platform to control and manage the entire highway.    

The solution currently consists of 90 Pelco cameras for highway monitoring and approximately 180 Samsung cameras for toll plaza monitoring. They chose these brands and models based upon quality, low maintenance and good vendor support. Highway monitoring requires very robust equipment and Rota has found Pelco’s cameras ideal for this application.

With so many miles of highway to monitor, the Odebrecht Group wanted to be able to more quickly access information, so that response times in emergencies could be improved. They also wanted a video management system (VMS) and analytic software that could address issues such as vandalism, integration with variable message highway signs (such as Amber Alerts), auto theft, weather issues, broken down vehicles, and even kidnappings. In short, they sought to build a security ring around the Sao Paulo area highway system.

Customized solution for highway safety

ISS has extensive experience with custom made solutions for highway safety. Their VMS and analytics software is being used for thousands of miles of highways around the world. Working with the integrator PGLOBAL, they were able to address some of the following areas for Rota:

--Customized the operator interface and integrated a very large video wall from Barco. From the same interface, operators can now control and monitor the video wall layout, which helps with improving response times.

--Enabled a new recording mode that allows three different ways to record images from one camera to reduce storage usage, and free up more bandwidth.

--Enabled two methods of video information based in Flash Media Server (same technology as YouTube) for website and customized so TV clients can purchase and broadcast images, which produces additional revenue.

--Programmed cameras to focus on call boxes if they are being vandalized or harmed in any way, allowing operators to view the scene.

--Provide a full view of weather conditions throughout the highway system, particularly crucial in summer when there are torrential rainstorms. In this way, emergency personnel can be immediately deployed to areas where there are issues, such as washouts.

--Call boxes are integrated with cameras so that when callers report a broken down vehicle or other issue, the operator can immediately see what mile marker they are at and dispatch vehicle. Incorrect reporting of mile marker from callers in the past was very common and time consuming and costly, often resulting in emergency vehicle being deployed many miles out of their way.

--Two toll plazas currently deploy license plate recognition video analytics technology so stolen vehicles can be identified, as well as those suspected in being used in kidnappings

“The demands in such a situation are very specific,” said Eduardo Arce, country manager of PGLOBAL, the systems integrator on the job. “With so many miles of highway to cover, and response times in an emergency situation a great consideration, we needed to assure that operators would have everything they needed literally at their fingertips. Our prior experience with such deployments, as well as ISS’s success in this arena with highways like CCR, made the whole process much easier. The staff at Rota das Bandeiras could clearly see we all knew the ins and outs of highway safety, and appreciate how a few seconds in an emergency situation can make all the difference.”