Transportation safety: Thales innovates with RATP
RATP manages the dense Paris network of trams and buses, which transports 1.3 billion passengers every year. Such traffic, in the heart of one of the most populous cities in Europe, represents a considerable transportation safety challenge. This was successfully met by Thales through the deployment of smart video surveillance throughout a fleet of 5000 vehicles.
A strategic challenge
The safety of RATP-managed on-surface public transportation networks is of strategic importance for the French State, and stands as a key economic issue for the country’s capital city. To guarantee the continuity of operations, the agency must simultaneously ensure passenger safety, equipment integrity and effective access control to transportation as well as to non-public areas.
Thales’s added value rests above all on a strong ability to integrate complementary technologies: video surveillance, smart data processing, cybersecurity.
A complete and scalable solution
Thales deployed in two phases (2002 and 2014) a complete public transportation safety program for RATP. The system includes:
- 5,000 vehicles (buses and trams) equipped with CCTV cameras;
- Secure and real-time image transmission;
- Smart data processing, with automatic detection of relevant incidents.
The embedded video protection tools implemented in 2014 are compatible with the 2002 hardware, while bringing significant innovations in compression and data transmission. Thales is also experimenting with new sound data processing to further refine abnormal events detection.
The solutions deployed are part of both a sustainable customer relationship and a process of continuous improvement, for the sake of optimized transportation safety.