Railway Technology Excellence Awards 2024: Huawei

Huawei Technologies (Huawei) has been recognised with two awards in the Innovation and Safety categories in the 2024 Railway Technology Excellence Awards, in the Perimeter Detection subcategory for its commitment to advancing railway technology and enhancing safety standards.

The Railway Technology Excellence Awards honour the most significant achievements and innovations in the railway industry. Powered by GlobalData’s business intelligence, the Awards recognise the people and companies leading change and shaping the future of the industry.

Huawei won the Innovation award for its groundbreaking Smart Railway – Perimeter Detection Solution, which integrates advanced technologies to enhance efficiency and precision in railway operations. Additionally, Huawei received the safety award for its comprehensive approach to safeguarding railway perimeters, significantly improving security standards and operational reliability.

As well as the absorbent liners created from the textile cuttings, the completed Dignity Kits also include absorbent shields and ‘snaps’, used to hold the absorbent liner in place within underwear. Packaged up in a waterproof wash bag, with instructions for use (provided in English and local language) as well as a calendar for females to mark their menstrual cycle; the Dignity Kits are distributed to those in need and wholly created or funded by Alpine Group.

These re-useable and washable kits, which can last up to four years, provide vulnerable females with essential sanitary supplies, and, along with the menstrual and reproductive health education the program provides, it aims to positively impact females from rural Africa to the harshest refugee settings in conflict zones around the world. The program is strengthened and amplified by partnerships with, for example, Transformation Textiles, the Egyptian Clothing Bank, Brighter World Communities and Freedom4Girls.

To date, Alpine Group has created over 150,000 Dignity Kits. During 2022, the Group distributed 20,000 Dignity Kits into refugee camps and rural areas in more than five locations in the Middle East where women and girls have limited to no access to any sanitary products. 10,000 pre-cut pieces have been transformed into kits and distributed to local communities in Egypt, thanks to the partnership with the Egyptian Clothing Bank. While, for the partnership with Freedom4Girls and Brighter Communities Worldwide, an initial 2,000 completed kits were distributed in the Kilifi region in Mombasa in April to May of this year, and, by the end of 2023, another 20,000 pre-cut pieces have been allocated to be sewn in Mombasa and distributed into villages in Kenya.

Railways are the most integral part of South Africa's transportation system, providing nearly 80% of passenger transport capacity and more than 30% of the country’s ore transport capacity. 

According to an announcement by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA), by the end of March 2024, the network had reached a capacity of 40 million passengers per year, a 167% increase from one year ago. With passenger numbers predicted to continue to rise, demand for reliable rail services in the region has never been greater.

“PRASA is the largest rail passenger transport system in Africa,” says Nokuthula Marjorie Ngonyama, group chief information officer of PRASA. “We have more than 22000km of railway track in the country and 490 stations. We take about 5.5 billion trips per annum on our network, so our operations are huge.”

To meet this increasing demand, PRASA has spent the past few years overhauling its network, embarking on an ICT strategy that covers connectivity and communication across all its operations and value chains. Since 2011, it has earmarked a total of $15bn to improve transport capacity and service quality, including 7,724 locomotive systems, signal systems in four regions, and wireless communications systems in three regions.

Alex Apparels is Alpine Group’s award-winning Egypt-based garment manufacturing division; officially recognized as the country’s number one apparel exporter by the Export Council of Egypt and best exporter to the US at QIZ’s 2022 conference. Alex Apparels was lauded by the Egyptian government for preserving all jobs amid the pandemic, taking prompt action to prioritize the health and safety of all team members. With 5,600 team members and 3,500 machines, Alex Apparels currently produces 33 million garments each year, increasing to 45 million garments by Q1 2024, when the state-of-the-art, LEED Gold certified Factory of the Future launches.

United Creations is the largest manufacturer of polo shirts in Jordan, recently acquiring a new facility that can produce five million garments annually. With 5,400 team members and 2,900 machines, United Creations currently produces 27 million garments per year, increasing to 39 million garments per year, by Q4 2024. Importantly, our operations in Jordan empower thousands of women and migrant team members, thereby supporting the livelihood of families across numerous countries in South Asia and beyond.

At Alpine Group we aim to harness our textile innovation and manufacturing expertise to make fashion fit for the future; creating an industry and holistic ecosystem where every thread counts, every person counts and every action counts.

These upgrades began with a GMS-R upgrade, including the construction of digital wireless communications systems for railway lines connecting South Africa’s major cities, such as Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, and Johannesburg. It also re-engineered signal systems and replaced mobile communications systems that had been operating for nearly 20 years but could no longer deliver secure data communications. 

Its new GMS-R system, which marked the first use of ETCS L2-compliant automatic train control systems in Africa, now enables the network to have effective transfer or movement of data from the train into the ground, driving predictive maintenance abilities, improving safety on trains, allowing the network to be more proactive in protecting passengers, and transmitting data that examines driver behaviour. 

PRASA’s enterprise network project, meanwhile, provides connectivity across all its offices and stations and enables passengers to connect and utilise data. Its recent shift to the private cloud, which speaks to its data centres where most of its applications sit, also plays a key role in creating more reliable, scalable and secure ICT infrastructure and operations. 

PRASA’s latest upgrade, however, is the deployment of an FRMCS-compliant railway perimeter security tool. Theft on South Africa’s tracks is a persistent challenge for the network, particularly where tracks are located near urban areas. Intrusions onto the railway perimeter are common, resulting in heavy losses and high rehabilitation expenses. The plundering of some areas has even led to service interruptions. 

Labelled the first optical-visual detection application in rail, PRASA’s new system enables full-process security detection by combining optical-visual linkage with an upper-layer integrated management platform to detect, report and acknowledge alerts.

Developed based on research into the current state-of-the-railways as well as an in-depth analysis of PRASA railway operations and needs, the solution uses intelligent vibration-sensing optical fibre, video AI, and video surveillance to deliver high stability and reliability in a range of scenarios, including strong winds and heavy rain.

Behind each of these developments is Huawei, a long-term partner of PRASA.

“In the 2010s, we realised the information era and intelligent era were fast approaching, and that is when the first partnership with Huawei took place,” says Ngonyama. “It was in 2013 that Huawei first partnered with PRASA in the areas of infrastructure and connectivity.” 

“This is the world’s first application of optical-visual linkage detection in railways,” says Hishaam Emeran, CEO of PRASA. “PRASA is proud to so readily embrace innovative technologies. Huawei’s optical-visual linkage perimeter protection solution truly solves actual security problems.

"I’m looking forward to the system being fully operational, to bring the team and our shareholders to witness this significant investment that we have made around our depot facilities to protect our assets.” 

Huawei has been a trusted partner in the railway industry for nearly three decades. According to Jacky Wang, VP of Huawei’s smart transportation business unit: “Huawei has always been dedicated to finding the right technology for the right scenario and boosting productivity with technologies. Together with industry partners, we are building a more secure, convenient, intelligent, and eco-friendly transportation industry through technological innovation.”

Huawei works with customers and partners around the world to seamlessly integrate Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with industry scenarios. This is spearheading the kind of innovation in infrastructure that drives digital and intelligent transformation, supporting a vast range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and applications for all industries.

Focusing on sustainable development, Huawei continues to increase its investment in Research and Development (R&D), year on year, in pursuit of innovation, stretching the bounds of what’s possible by identifying emerging industry needs. To overcome new challenges, the company works with thought leaders drawn from the world’s greatest academies to explore new theories, architectures, and technologies.

With innovative technologies and state-of-the-art capabilities, Huawei’s products and solutions — including intelligent cloud networks, intent-driven all-optical networks, data centres, data storage solutions, 5G to Business (5GtoB) solutions, and tried and tested services — are proven and widely recognised in the industry.