How Mission Critical Control Rooms Work?
In the pro-AV industry, there are a vast number of industries and application areas a manufacturer has to provide solutions for. Now, let’s highlight what mission critical control rooms are and what are the most demanding features they challenge us with daily.
What is a mission critical control room?
Generally, a mission critical control room means a large hall where centralized data and video visualization over a video wall is performed. Based on the input data and the graphics or video information over the video wall the operators supervise and manage a remote process.
In such an environment, it is rather crucial that everyone relies on a central video wall which serves as a strong base of information of ever-changing data while providing constant access to each operator in a given control room.
These sorts of control rooms are installed to respond to critical events, where great impact decisions are made within a fraction of a second. The purpose of these control rooms is to supervise and manage or even minimize the loss in certain situations and restore damaged services.
Types of mission critical control rooms by industries
There is a great variety of mission critical control rooms worldwide that are utilized in different industries and areas, while they all serve the above-mentioned purpose of providing critical data to all participants, allowing to make reliable decisions quickly.
Here are some applications that might help you get familiar with the concept of a mission critical control room:
- enterprise-like network operation centers and data centers
- federal installations like crisis centers and command and control centers
- traffic management centers
- utility centers like power and gas operation centers
- transportation facilities such as maritime or airline operations
- and public safety like law enforcement and emergency centers
How does it work?
Generally, a control room is equipped with a central video wall to display information of common interest while multiple operators are sitting in front of a large coherent screen. Over these screens the information must be displayed in any position and size regardless of the monitor borders.
The operators each have access to separate sections of this video wall where they can display information locally or remotely from their computer devices for the entire room to see, while typically showing details of general performance, statistical data about a given operation, ongoing incidents or significant alarms. Technicians usually have several computers and monitors on their desk for the supervision of certain part of operation.
In these kinds of applications, control means comprehending great variety of information from different sources, putting these into context and making effective decisions. DEXON Systems make this possible by tailoring our solutions to our customer’s control room standards. This field especially requires cutting-edge technology and overcoming boundaries to create a secure and reliable platform.
How to secure a 24/7 operation
Redundant power supply
Some video wall controllers ensure a dual, redundant, hot swappable power supply option. Most chassis contain internal power supplies supporting all of the international mains electricity standards from 90V up to 265V. The optional second or third redundant power supplies give high reliability as they are fully redundant, sharing the system load among the units, additionally hot swappable, so they can be exchanged during full operation.
Dual LAN connection
The reliable video wall controller contains dual TCP/IP LAN connection and so protects the stable network connection even if one of the network lines goes down. This is a critical part as the communication with other operators, with the video wall controller and even with the external world is basic for reliable operation.
Reliability
In order to keep the video wall of your mission critical control room run 24/7 in secure conditions, you need a video wall control to be reliable. All operators must rely on constant delivery of updated information coming from different sources.
List of must have infrastructure
To maximize the productivity, functionality, and reaction time of all involved, only exceptional quality visual information and effective monitoring functions are acceptable. For that, you’ll need a top spec video wall controller.
Speed, resolution and signal standards are significant aspects to fulfill so the scope of your operation is limited. In order to avoid any limitations, there are some vital requirements to be met.
Compatibility
First of all, your video wall controller will need to be able to support data from multiple sources, including video, maps, and info graphics.
You can also find general windows applications’ icons, toolbars and certainly the full windows desktop which offer the possibility to work with any applications.
You can display and work with any web browsers and open any desired webpage. All web pages generally appear live and you can have multiple browser windows opened parallel.
Additionally, to these standard Windows graphic applications, you might need to use SCADA and any Office applications like Excel and Power Point or even mapping applications.
Customization
As each mission critical control room application is different, they each need different requirements and customization possibilities. Some examples can be of data, displays and sources. Therefore, you need to keep in mind that your chosen device must match your specific needs and goals.
Some additional features that might come in handy is for instance an easy-to-use management tool in the user interface of your device. In a mission critical control room, you might need functions that the user interface needs to contain like design settings, recalling layouts, data displays, preview options and user interface using local languages.
In order to manage access of certain party of your video wall, some devices offer the ability to hierarchically assign different user and access rights to selected operators.
Durability
As you might have noticed, pro-AV industry does not use PC based cheap solutions. Especially, such serious and significant applications, like these mission critical control rooms, are generally built for long-term.
If you wish to pick a long-term solution, and why wouldn’t you do so, make sure that your solution offers high-quality materials and attention to detail. This must come hand in hand with a supplier who is providing long-term support to your product.
Train your staff to use MCCR equipment
Easy-to-use graphics windows allow quick and efficient set up, control and supervisions. Most systems provide easy-to-use graphics user interface for management of wall resources. These are especially developed for people with various backgrounds and for various application areas.
This means that these platforms need to be very user-friendly so operators with different background can easily understand and use. Simplicity is also key, as such a user interface needs to be quickly adjustable to display data instantaneously.
DEXON’s solution to control rooms
While there are a number of video wall controllers that will likely be able to meet the demands of a mission control room, you might as well invest in one that has been designed explicitly for such an environment.
The backbone of such operations is an advanced video wall controller that is easy-to-use, that provides reliable, 24/7 operations every single day. As we manufacture and design our models to be able to serve such operations, trustworthiness and reliability are key factors in this industry as mission critical control rooms need to operate around the clock without any discrepancies.
So we offer our video wall controllers that are widely used worldwide. The advantage to use DEXON controllers is the fact that they offer Windows 10 desktop enabling the operators to easily use the device from the first day. They also offer unlimited scaling possibilities, real time display and overlay windows to provide a complete solution to fulfill the task.
Operators can use any graphic applications that can improve their daily job as well as direct signal inputs and network-based information can be managed by remote operators through professional graphics user interface for centralized supervision in mission critical control rooms.
DEXON Systems’ products are applied by federal agencies for surveillance, as well as in crisis rooms for supervision and control purposes by enhancing efficiency and immediate reactions in significant emergency rooms all around the world.
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