EWS for Railroads
Save Lives - Satisfy Government mandates, Mitigate Planning Issues, Save
Money
Network Applications
... for Railroads
Railroads are very long and narrow by definition and carry all kinds of hazardous materials. Many of them run through our cities. Unfortunately crossing collisions are all too common.
Recent fatal tank car spills have elevated local government concerns and several cities are trying to ban rail Hazmat shipments through them - most notably Washington DC. This is causing real problems in routing cars around these restrictions.
One way to deal with such restrictions is to provide first responders with targeted information of the contents of the shipment - but only when needed, and provide homes along the tracks with warning radios of their own.
Our Warning System ...
... is Effective and Simple to Use
Our network uses a specially designed clock radio to wake people up and send them messages that they can read on the display. As the system owner, you choose what to send, to which group of radios and at what level of urgency over a simple web interface to our server. There is no equipment to buy other than the radios themselves. The system is easy to set up and affordable whether you need 100 radios or a million.
Scenarios
A city is threatening restricting Hazmat shipments because of a recent chlorine leak
Solution
In exchange for no new regulations, you offer to provide each fire station and the EOC with one of our radios and promise to notify those radios of the chemical nature of any materials spilled in their city due to a train accident within xx minutes. Further you promise to provide each household or school within 1000 ft of each railroad crossing with radio so they can be warned too.
How it works
You logon to a special website to compose and direct your messages. These warning messages are then sent to our network of commercial FM stations and broadcast using the Radio Data System (RDS) channel. The infrastructure is already there and the high power and coverage of FM make it ideal for reliable distribution of such warnings. RDS is used worldwide and is a very robust data channel.
The Receiver
The RDS Early Warning Receiver looks and acts like a normal FM clock radio until it is triggered. Then it loudly announces your message and scrolls it across the screen for all to read.
It is equipped with two tuners. One is for the clock radio - the second tuner locks to our network station and listens to this RDS-emergency-channel continuously - even if the radio is "off". The clock is kept updated by the network so it is extremely accurate.
The receiver is equipped with a rechargeable backup battery so it will alert many hours after power is lost. The receiver is designed to reach everybody, and it is loud enough to alert everyone even if they are not in the same room.
There is also an enhanced "professional" version with even more features for first responders and the disabled.
Additionally, external devices like large-scale displays (billboards), lamps, flashing lights, etc may be hooked up to the professional version triggered by relay or its serial interface.