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Mission Critical Control Rooms Overview

mission critical control room

In the pro-AV industry, there are a vast number of industries and application areas a manufacturer has to provide solutions for. DEXON provides professional solutions to emergency centers, network operation and data centers, transportation facilities and more.

What is a Mission Critical Control Room?

Generally, a mission critical control room means a large room where centralized data and real-time video is showcased over a video wall. From here, input data and video information is supervised and managed from a remote setting.

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 impact decisions are made within a fraction of a second. The purpose of these control rooms is to supervise, manage and react to critical situations.

Types of Mission Critical Control Rooms

There is a great variety of mission critical control rooms worldwide that are utilized in different industries and areas. They all serve the purpose of providing critical data to all participants, allowing them to make reliable decisions quickly.

  • 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
  • Public safety like law enforcement and emergency centers

How Does It Work?

Generally, a control room is equipped with a 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. Typically this shows 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 parts of the operation.

In these kinds of applications, control means comprehending a great variety of information from different sources, putting these into context and making effective decisions. DEXON USA makes 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.

mission critical control room
mission critical control room
mission critical control room

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, so it 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 running 24/7 in secure conditions, you need a video wall control solution that is reliable. All operators must rely on constant delivery of updated information coming from different sources.

Infrastructure Must-Haves

To maximize the productivity, functionality, and reaction time of all involved, only exceptional quality visual information and effective monitoring functions will be 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 that are needed.

Compatibility

We know your video wall controller will need to be able to support data from multiple sources, including video, maps, and infographics.

You also will need general windows applications’ icons, toolbars and certainly the full windows desktop which offers the possibility to work with any applications.

Users will be able to 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 PowerPoint or even mapping applications.

Customization

As each mission critical control room application is different, they also need different requirements and customization opportunities. Some examples include data transfer, displays and sources. Therefore, you need to keep in mind that your chosen device must match your specific needs and goals.

An additional feature that may also come into play is an easy-to-use management tool within the user interface of your device. In a mission critical control room, functions that the user interface might need to include are design settings, recalling layouts, data displays, preview options and user interface using local languages.

In order to manage access to certain segments of your video wall, some devices offer the ability to hierarchically assign different user and access rights to selected operators.

Durability

As you may already know, the pro-AV industry does not use cheap PC based solutions. Especially with such serious and significant applications like mission critical control rooms, which are generally built for long-term.

When you look to pick a long-term solution, 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 products.

Training Staff on User-Friendly MCCR Equipment

Easy-to-use graphics windows allow quick and efficient set up, control and supervision. 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 backgrounds can easily understand and use them. Simplicity is also key, as such a user interface needs to be quickly adjustable to display data instantaneously.

DEXON USA’s Solution to Control Rooms

While there are a number of video wall controllers on the market that will likely be able to meet the demands of a mission control room, DEXON’s products have been designed explicitly for mission control room environments.

Our mission control room backbone products offer an advanced video wall controller that is easy-to-use, that provides reliable, 24/7 operations every single day. As DEXON manufactures and designs models to be able to serve such operations, know that trustworthiness and reliability are key factors in this industry as mission critical control rooms need to operate around the clock without any discrepancies.

At DEXON USA, we offer video wall controllers that are widely used worldwide. The advantages of using DEXON controllers are:

  1. Windows desktop interface, enabling the operators to easily use the device from the first day.
  2. Unlimited scaling possibilities, with 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. Also, network-based information can be managed by remote operators through professional graphics user interface for centralized supervision in mission critical control rooms.

DEXON products are used 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.

Contact DEXON USA today to learn more about mission critical control room solutions.