Tamil Nadu’s first AI-based monitoring system, deployed at Madukarai range of Coimbatore Forest Division last year to enable safe movement of elephants and prevent tusker-deaths on railway tracks has given fruitful results, including 2500 safe elephant crossings so far, said Supriya Sahu IAS, Chief Secretary - Forests, TN Government, after reviewing the project outcomes.

There are two railway tracks passing through Solakarai beat and Bolampatti Block - I Reserved Forests in Madukkarai Range. This forest area shares its boundary with Kerala forests along the Walayar river and are regularly visited by elephants.

Some unfortunate incidents with elephants took place at different periods, and in spite of various efforts, it could not be drastically reduced. Hence the Government consulted with experts and decided to implement Artificial Intelligence enabled autonomous surveillance system to monitor the movement of elephants 24x7 to effectively track the elephants along the tracks and avoid the accidents completely.

After conducting field investigation, the most vulnerable stretch of 7 Kms of Railway track was identified for implementing the project. The Government had sanctioned an amount of Rs. 7.24 crore for the installation of the artificial intelligence system.

The A.I.based monitoring system was launched Sulakarai beat in Madukkarai range of Coimbatore Forest Division back in Feb 2024.

It has 12 high towers fitted with both thermal and normal cameras, installed at strategic locations along the track in the Bolampatti Block - 1 Forests, 500 m apart from each other covering all the important elephant crossing areas, giving 150 m coverage on either side of the track for early detection of animal movement.

The sensed data is automatically transferred to the control room that processes the data collected from the field on real time basis. The front line staffs of forest department along with technical team are available at the control room on shift basis to monitor the animal movement and inform the loco pilots of Railways through calls, SMS and alerts. In addition to that hooters and digital display alerts are also placed on the tracks for the loco pilots (train operators) to see and act well in advance in the event of any animal presence along the two tracks.

The Forest department and the railway official's work in sync to prevent accidents based on information generated by Artificial Intelligence. This Artificial Intelligence generated data not only prevent accidents, it gives valuable data on the elephant movement, elephant behaviour, profiling of individual elephant and further morphological and behavioural studies for future decision making.

Post the project review, Supriya Sahu mentioned on X that the system gave 5011 AI-generated alerts to staff and this resulted in Zero elephant accidents and 2500 safe elephant crossings. She shared that the results are stunning.