What is India-made KAVACH anti-collision technology and how does it work?

In the budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the KAVACH protection program to protect the 2,000 km rail network; we will tell you here what it is and how it works.

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The Budget 2022 announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has promised many advances. Among these new projects is one of the announcements of protecting the 2,000 km railway network in India by a technology named KAVACH. The aforementioned technology will be brought in 2022-23 under the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission.

In her statement, Finance Minister said, "As a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat, 2,000 km of the rail network will be brought under the indigenous world-class technology KAVACH in 2022-23, for safety and capacity augmentation."

What is the KAVACH technology?

KAVACH is an anti-collision technology developed in India to prevent train accidents effectively. This anti-collision technology reduces the chances of an error to the margin of a single error in 10,000 years.

Affirming the facts above, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, "The indigenously-developed anti-collision technology is SIL4 certified, which means there is the probability of a single error in 10,000 years."

The KAVACH technology, in more technical terms, is known as Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) or Automatic Train Protection System (ATP) system. It is aimed at bringing down the number of rail accidents to zero.

The technology has also received a SIL4 certification, reinforcing that it can reduce the chances of error to one in 10,000 years. 

How does KAVACH work?

KAVACH uses a network of devices mounted on two trains moving towards each other to avoid a collision. The devices work with the help of radio technology and Global positioning systems (GPS).

This system avoids the risk of collision by precisely assessing the course of two trains at "collision risk" and automatically initiating the braking system.