Case Study

Digital video & voice recording system for Metro Dubai

Reply DAM meets the challenge of the Expolink Route 2020.

The iconic project in Dubai

Route 2020 is an extension of the Dubai Metro and was officially inaugurated last summer. The new line project began in July 2016 and was carried out by the ExpoLink Consortium (led by Alstom and composed of ACCIONA and Gülermak). Their contract with RTA (Roads & Transport Authority) was to design and build the extension of the red line of the Dubai Metro and upgrade the existing lines system.
The new line has a length of 14.5 km (11km is overground and 3.5 km underground) and runs over seven stations including the crucial metro station in the Expo area, key to serving the 25 million visitors expected to flock to the UAE during the six-month run of the global ExpoLink exhibition.

The Route 2020

The trains offer an excellent travel experience

The Route 2020 project confirms Dubai's commitment to provide citizens and visitors with a metro network and transit system oriented towards greener and smarter mobility. The trains offer an excellent travel experience with a high level of comfort for passengers, thanks to wide walkways, doors and windows, and three specific areas for the Silver, Family and Gold classes. The trains are eco-conscious, equipped with an electric braking system, LED lighting and innovative solutions for reducing energy consumption. The plan is ambitious and assumes a more significant and strategic value in response to emergency measures related to the global pandemic.

Thales Italia is part of Thales consortium

Thales Italia is part of Thales consortium, the official supplier of the Metro's technological systems. Thales equipped the Route 2020 with a state-of-the-art driverless train signalling technology as well as integrated supervision, telecommunications, passengers' services, security and automated fare collection systems and smart gates with smart features. With a strategic function in this ambitious project, Thales Italia produced excellent work in record time and ensured a safer, more modern and interactive train travel experience. Thanks to the development of cutting-edge solutions for supervision and control, communication, safety, public information and video broadcasting, Thales has updated and improved all systems already in operation, avoiding any interruption to metro operation service. A radio infrastructure for broadband data transmission allows a real-time vision of on-board cameras and broadcasting of high-quality advertising videos and information.

Discovery Reply - DVVR

Alongside Thales, Discovery Reply provided the integrated hardware and software structures of the DVVR - Digital Voice and Video Recording System. The Digital Asset Management Platform provides the major features and combines third-party components. The DVVR system integrates Tetra and Telephone Recording Solution, as well as SIP, Public Announcement and CCTV media events to offer a central, multi-source audio-video incident management capability to the Operators of the subway Control Center. This assures record levels of reliability, comfort and safety to the circa 650,000 passengers carried every day.

The new digital voice and video recording system

The former DVVR system delivered in 2010, was replaced by an innovative Digital Voice and Video Recording System. The System provides audio, video recording and archiving facilities upgrades for Telephone - TETRA, and renewed functions for the metro legacy systems. The system is by-design a “layer” based architecture, where each layer carries out the specific processing in order to seamlessly support and adapt for an homogenous media feed from multiple sources. Integration for media sources have been extended to support OCS Public announcements and SIP Calls.

For CCTV video sub-system the DVVR has been extended to support new video formats while preserving compatibility with the legacy systems still in place. All the delivered subsystems are deployed with a redundant configuration in both primary and back up metro Operation Control Centers, supporting hot failover and disaster recovery to guarantee uninterrupted services’ availability.

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The digital asset management platform

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The Central Archive facility has been entirely delivered on top of DiscoveryTM DAM and provides the I/O processes of the destaging, archive and playback layers.

The Digital Asset Management core platform provides the A/V media workflow together with the search & retrieval capabilities supporting the playback layer for the incident management.

The platform is targeted for a load of more than 20K/day relevant audio and video recording events, with a 30-day retention in fault tolerant configuration, supporting disaster recovery and hot switchover.

Some additional benefits are:
• The Operators of the Metro OCC Control Centers can access all the recorded relevant material.
• The UX has been improved with media extended search capabilities.
• A set of pre-configured workspaces creates easy and quick access to media groups.
• Media playback can be quickly shifted across different audio and video recordings.

The OCC operators can now create a group of audio events of their own interest and mix them up into a single audio call. Finally, all the recorded audio video is made available for playback throughout a new multi-source time-based incident replay interface.

Collaboration and integration

Discovery Reply’s DAM integrates the system’s audio recording facilities, as consolidated solutions on the market. The audio recording solution was configured in agreement with Thales, integrated by Discovery Reply with the Central Archive DAM and delivered as key component of the whole DVVR system.

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RES

The recording solutions were configured and integrated with the support of the Italian distributor RES, a leading company for the national market of telephone and mobile radio audio recording.

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NICE®

The Tetra Recording layer was delivered in partnership with NICE UK, integrating NICE’s Airbus Certified Tetra Recording Solution. It was implemented and configured to interface Tetra Dubai network by multiple Tetra Connectivity Servers in a redundant deployment with more than 120 channels concurrently recording for individual and group calls.

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RETIA® - ReDat®

The Telephone Recording layer was delivered in partnership with RETIA A.S. integrating ReDat®, the Alcatel Certified recording solution interfaces the Omni 4400 PCX Enterprise Alcatel PBX and supports more than 300 dispatch telephones in 64 stations throughout the metro.

Reply value

Discovery Reply boasts more than 10 years of expertise in collaboration with Thales, showcasing Reply’s value in terms of competence, reliability and flexibility. Reply contributed its technical know-how, combined with a proven solution and a skilled project team, acting as a partner for the realization of the innovative DVVR integrated architecture.

Thales

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Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies, investing in digital and “deep tech” innovations – connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum computing – to build a confident future crucial for the development of our societies. The Group provides its customers – businesses, organisations and governments – in the defense, aeronautics, space, transport, and digital identity and security domains with solutions, services and products that help them fulfil their critical role, consideration for the individual being the driving force behind all decisions. Thales has 81,000 employees in 68 countries. In 2020 the Group generated sales of €17 billion. THALES ITALIA S.p.A has been present in Italy since 1988, offering cutting edge technical solutions aimed at air traffic management, with expertise in landing, navigation and surveillance systems; defence, with expertise in military communications and electronic warfare; transport, with expertise in rail signaling and supervision solutions and security, with expertise in protection and supervision of critical infrastructures.

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Discovery Reply has been serving the digital-media market since 2003, supplying end-to-end solutions for managing the entire life cycle of multimedia content (videos, images, audio and documents). Discovery Reply MultimediaTM is Reply’s enterprise-level DAM suite for building vertical applications for various industrial sectors, from manufacturing, finance and fashion to retail, broadcasting and security.