Drones watching over the rail network and keeping the public safe

In an inconspicuous office building in central London something interesting is happening that very few people will notice but thousands will benefit from. British Transport Police is using drones as first responders (DFR) to watch over the rail network and give them a level of situational awareness they’ve never had before. I visited the drone flight operations room to find out more.

Simon Bachelor is Head of the Drones Programme at British Transport Police (BTP) and after a 30-year career in policing has found himself back at the centre of operations, taking the use of drones – which the force has used since 2017 – to a new level. For years, the limiting factor for the use of drones across the nation’s railways has been regulations. The use of state aircraft exemptions means that they can fly drones beyond line of visual site. This innocuous phrase, shortened to the acronym BVLOS is critical when it comes to pushing the boundaries of what drones can do when it comes to public safety.

“Using the DJI drone in a box technology, what it’s allowed us to do is look through our analytics, working closely with Network Rail, to work out where our key disruption and trespass hotspots are across the rail network. We can ask ourselves: what is causing a problem?”

Simon Bachelor, Head of Drones Programme, British Transport Police

The disruption is primarily linked to safety (often of vulnerable people) and the convenience of the travelling public but it’s also about saving the taxpayer money as Simon explains: “There’s a monetary value attached to all delays, and if we can get to those scenes and resolve them more quickly, particularly where no trespassers are found, then we return the trains to operating at full speed and resume a normal service. This is ultimately a risk based decision, and what we term the ‘evidence of absence’.

With seven sites now operational across the UK, it’s just the start of testing the drone in a box capability. BTP is using DJI drones and DJI software and the team of pilots are all frontline police officers. Simon explains that there is no blueprint setting out how to run a team like this, they are trying things out, learning and iterating.

For my visit we get eyes on the Selhurst DFR, which is in Croydon, South London. “This is one of our hotspots,” Simon explains. “The industry produces analytics around where our trespass and disruption hotspots are, and the aim is to put the technology where we’re going to maximise the effect of the drones.”

While we don’t physically go up to the top of the building in south London, we do get a bird’s eye view with some strategically located cameras on the roof showing the drone in its box, ready to fly once one of the pilots sends an instruction. It is surrounded by sensors for wind and rain – the operation has to be safe and meet aviation standards. For connectivity it is connected to the internet and if that fails, it has back up from a Starlink satellite.

Of course, it’s not just BTP drones that are flying in the sky, there are other drones and aircraft including the National Police Air Service (NPAS). In the operations room, I can see screens that show the NPAS helicopters and other aircraft that could affect the BTP drone. Using the Airbox technology on one screen, the BTP pilots can see what’s going on with NPAS and other operators although these drones only fly 30 metres in the air.

Watching the test flight, the sharpness of the visuals is incredible and the detail the drone can see even though it is 30m above the ground is impressive. The work of the pilots is preventative and responsive; they can scan the railways looking for potential issues and respond when there is a specific concern. Simon says that they only record the drone flights once they see something of ‘interest’ and it then has the potential to be evidential, the same as any other footage from policing.

Once a drone returns to its dock, it needs around 20 minutes to recharge, so at each location there are two drones, so one is always available for use. The pilot is watching the battery percentage Simon says, “The drone knows if it’s two kilometres away from home and how much battery it needs to get back, it will tell the pilot when it needs to go home, and if not initiated by the pilot, it will automatically take you back home and make sure that it gets back in the box.”

In one example, Simon says that where drones have been able to spot people on the tracks thought to be trespassing as they weren’t wearing the right PPE, it later transpired they were in fact railway workers. This means they didn’t have to send a BTP response to check the safety of the railway and Network Rail could address working practices, saving time and increasing safety.

Similarly, where the operators spot a carriage that’s been graffitied in the railway sidings, they’ll tell the train operating company this train’s been graffitied. Simon continues: “I speak to the person that does the graffiti for Southeastern quite a lot and he quite likes it when we tell him we have spotted it, because it helps him track down where it took place and get it removed. It’s an efficiency thing for them but also who wants to see graffiti on trains?”

Both of these examples illustrate the business case for drones: by identifying problems from the sky, BTP doesn’t have to send officers to the scene, it doesn’t have to manage the risk of them working alongside or on the rail network and they can be doing other things.

“It’s not just about freeing up officer time, we’re not putting the public at risk by responding as an emergency. The drone team has cleared a situation up pretty quickly and said there’s no need for officers to be deployed. We get the officers back and they are available to be deployed elsewhere.”

Disruption on the rail network costs money. I am familiar with the announcements on a train that tell you if it is late, you can claim compensation. The railway operators would prefer a train to be on time and not have to pay out and for BTP, it’s the knock-on effect of people’s behaviour that can mean further disruption as tempers fray. “So you can see that a broken down train could well become a policing incident, there is this almost blurring of lines between there being a need for a police response and the incident being just the responsibility of the operator to manage,” Simon adds.

Looking to the future, Simon says that artificial intelligence will make a big difference particularly when using thermal imaging and flying at night. His team will expand from seven to 14 sites but that requires training pilots and of course setting up the physical infrastructure to house the drones on the top of strategically located buildings. The team has benefitted from optimising the set up through the initial locations and can then do a ‘rinse and repeat’ for future settings. Simon is also looking at fixed wing aircraft with payloads – the ability to carry weight – such as scanning and infrastructure inspection type technologies that could benefit Network Rail.

It may be early days for the drone in a box technology but based on this visit, the potential looks really promising and the enthusiasm of the team is palpable. Moving to larger location with more kit and – thankfully in this hot weather – windows, the team will be more comfortable and ready to tackle the challenges and demand that will keep them busy well into the future.

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Simon will be speaking at The Emergency Tech Show on 17 September, sharing the experience of drones as first responders on a panel on the Emergency Tech Leaders’ stage. Join him at the NEC in Birmingham to find out more. Register to attend here.