Smart paper ticket to check unauthorised entry at Eco Park

Kolkata: Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation ( HIDCO) has proposed to introduce smart paper

ticket to facilitate the visitors and stop unauthorised entry of people at the Eco Park.

Eco park, the biggest urban park in eastern India, has recorded 1.5 crore footfall since its opening in 2015.

At Gate 3, near Misti Hub, a smart paper ticket has been introduced which does away with the plastic RFID cards but is able to operate the automatic gates in the same way. It allows just one visitor to enter after ticket scanning and closes down the gates rapidly to prevent a second visitor to enter unauthorisedly.

This is done through printing on a QR code on the ticket that is read by a photo sensor and then operate the gate flaps.

The smart component is ensuring that a paper ticket with QR code cannot be used twice although the paper ticket is retained by the visitor.

The intelligent software connecting the gate mechanism with the server in ticket counter ensures that the ticket is valid for 30 minutes from the time of issue and once scanned and gates operated, the

same QR coded ticket is invalidated from opening the gates again. So one can't buy one ticket and pass it across the fence to a friend and enter again.

There are six entry gates at the Eco Park. Lakhs of visitors enter through these, the most popular ones being at Gates numbers 2 and 4. There are ticket counters with multiple windows manned by staff of Hidco to issue tickets. On payment a white RFID enabled plastic card is issued from the ticket counter to each visitor and on insertion in the slot at the automatic gates the gate flaps will open for a few seconds to let the visitor go in and then rapidly close.

This worked well as networked software system also counted the number of cards issued and thus the accounts closing at the day's end (Eco Park closes at 8.30 pm in summer).

But there was no receipt with the visitor as a result of which, once inside, no further surprise random checks could be done to prevent unauthorised entry.