CONTROL ROOMS
A control room or operations room is a room serving as a central space where a large physical facility or physically dispersed service can be monitored and controlled. A control room will often be part of a larger command center.
WHAT KIND OF CONTROL ROOM ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ?
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Transmission & Distribution Control
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Traffic Management
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Network Operators
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Security Operations
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Campus Security Operations
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Process Controls
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Emergency Operations
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Command and Control
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Healthcare Operations
WHY DO WE NEED A CONTROL ROOM ?
Control rooms are vital for organizations to efficiently and effectively monitor multiple information streams and make accurate mission-critical decisions. With an ever-increasing number of content sources and applications to manage, in addition to collaborative information integration needs, today’s control rooms need to enable system management that is efficient and cost-effective, while at the same time offering maximum operator comfort.
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Whether it’s for monitoring, decision-making, responding, controlling, collaborating, or communicating, control room solutions are an essential component to daily operations, allowing for more efficient work and better decision-making. Power plants can benefit from control room solutions in a number of ways: in their process facilities; for surveillance; in facility situation rooms; for command and control; for traffic management; and for broadcasting distribution monitoring
ADVANTAGES OF HAVING A CONTROL ROOM ?
When contemplating control room changes, selecting the technology, vendor, and integrator are obviously important. However, the following aspects should also be considered:
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SEAMLESS AV AND IT INTEGRATION
The convergence of audiovisual (AV) and IT is already evident in many control room solutions. Look for experts who leverage IT/IP technologies as a way of connecting AV and server/device-room components, integrating information for collaboration, and facilitating responsive operations and crucial commands. The solutions offered should provide unlimited scalability, utilize space efficiently, and include re-deployable architecture. The solution should also allow for advanced, interactive, single sign-on management of the whole system, and should be able to leverage existing infrastructure and equipment, or at the very least, the tools to integrate with disparate systems.
ERGONOMIC APPROACH
Control room solutions should be designed to merge into operator-focused environments that will minimize the risk of human error and maximize performance and efficiency. For example, over IP solutions allow operators to be separated from devices, while safe, secure, remote access is made easy, and desktops and servers are made clutter-free and centrally manageable. Easy-to-navigate graphical user interfaces for convenient, intuitive configuration and operation should be standard.
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VISUAL EXCELLENCE
This is not referring to an aesthetically pleasing product on the outside (though that’s always nice), rather, the component capabilities must be first-rate. For collaboration-heavy deployments, look for solutions that deliver high-performance image quality to multiple display video walls (Figure 4), as well as to desk console stations for mission-critical operations. Integrated information and visual details in resolutions up to 4K allow for more accurate monitoring, contact collaboration, and proper responses for situations that have an ever-increasing number of sources, authentication mechanisms, and applications to control.
