April-May_2022 - 42

[
VIDEO SECURITY
]
Crash Hardened Memory
R
ECENT NTSB RECOMMENDATIONS, THE
FRA NPRM 2019-14407 and APTA recommendation
APTA RT-OP-RP-024-19
Blake Kozol
CEO, Deuta America Corp.
pertain to retaining forward-facing and operator-facing
camera feeds in crash protected
memory for rail vehicles. The desire to preserve
such data in protected memory is not new and
has been included on the NTSB Most Wanted
List for years. In August 2021, the Federal Transit
Authority (FTA) released FTA Report 0200
Recorders also
help operators
establish
effective safety
management
strategies and
training.
" Inward- and Outward-Facing Audio and Video
Recordings for Transit Rail Vehicles " in response
to an NTSB safety recommendation from 2017,
which resulted from investigations surrounding
transit rail collisions.
Having video data preserved after an accident
can be helpful in investigating the causes and circumstances
surrounding such incidents. Crash
protected memory helps to ensure those videos
may still be available even after a catastrophic
collision. Recorders also help operators establish
effective safety management strategies and
training. As such, this requirement should increasingly
be seen in new rail transit vehicle procurements
and retrofit specifications; however,
many recent procurements for new rail vehicles
and retrofits have not included this requirement
even though they have been required in at least
some modes since 2015.
Historical providers of such
protected memory devices
have usually been event recorder
manufacturers, not
video system integrators.
Saving video files rather
than event data requires
a significant difference in
protected memory capacity,
communication interface
file management and read/write
speed compared to traditional travel
data/event storage. This is especially challengAN
EXAMPLE of a
hardened memory
module certified by the
U.S. Department of
Transportation.
Deuta America, Corp.
ing in large memory units designed to comply to
IEEE:1482.1:2013 and FRA 49 CFR 229 standards
which require substantial thermal insulation and
mechanical stability. These high-capacity and
high-speed memories also need to be able to
42 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | APRIL/MAY 2022
Widespread use of a " black box " for video storage should
ultimately lead to safety improvements across the industry.
function reliably for years without generating
an interior buildup of heat which could damage
the electronics or shorten their lifecycle.
Other critical considerations are ease of integration
into the network and NVR ecosystem.
For example, communications interface and data
latency need to be contemplated. Video must be
processed and stored as instantaneously as possible.
The amount of time between the loss of
video feed and a power cut, for example, can
have a significant impact on the usability of the
stored video in post-accident investigation and
should be kept under one second.
The supply industry also offers solutions
which do not require a complete video system
upgrade and can be retrofitted on existing NVRs
to provide crash protected capabilities. As most
U.S. transit vehicles are already outfitted with
forward-facing and operator-facing cameras,
this can impact authorities' abilities to deploy
systems cost-effectively and enable more widespread
usage.
Again, available storage size is important in
several ways. As more camera feeds and higher
quality video are made available, memory technologies
continue evolving. Acquiring the largest
capacity of memory available helps to decrease
the risk of obsolescence and capacity limitations
threatening overall product life cycle costs. As
the amount of time covered by stored video is a
function of the number of cameras, video quality,
compression and available storage, a large
capacity memory contributes to assuring video
data can be retained in high quality and from
multiple cameras for longer periods of time.
The widespread use of crash hardened memory
for video storage should ultimately lead to safety
improvements across the industry as investigators
will have access to sound and video information
in addition to the traditional travel data that
previously may have been unavailable because it
was destroyed or never captured. This can enable
not just an enhanced ability to make conclusions
regarding post-accident investigations but also allow
operators to improve their safety training and
safety management strategies based on observed
behaviors in actual operating situations.
http://www.MassTransitmag.com
April-May_2022

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