Overcoming control room challenges with distributed AV-over-IP video wall technology – a guide for security leaders by Paul Vander Plaetse, Founder and CEO at VuWall.
In today’s complex security landscape, control rooms play a pivotal role in safeguarding assets, ensuring public safety and maintaining operational continuity.
Although control rooms have always been essential for handling complex and critical situations, they are now facing an exponential increase in data and information.
This has created a level of complexity across all sectors, leading to a fast-growing need for control rooms and coordination centers globally, even in smaller organizations, where decisions must be made based on the analysis of large amounts of data from various sources.
As the nerve centers of security operations, control rooms must be resilient, efficient and adaptable to emerging threats and technological advancements.
However, security leaders often face significant challenges in achieving these objectives.
This article explores these challenges and offers strategies for overcoming them, ensuring control rooms remain effective and robust.
We will explore how recent technology innovations can help resolve some of today’s challenges and help security leaders achieve their objectives.
Control room operators are inundated with data from various sources, which can lead to information overload, reducing situational awareness instead of increasing it.
This issue is particularly prominent in environments where multiple interdependent systems must be coordinated, such as city traffic management centers and emergency operation centers (EOC).
Common examples include a city traffic management center that may include a CCTV network (traffic cameras), an advanced travel information system (ATIS) that may be adjusted based on what is seen on cameras, a road weather information system (RWIS) that uses weather forecasts to help anticipate and manage traffic flow, public transport coordination for when street incidents affect the public transport system and public works planning where upcoming public works may influence ATIS parameters.
These systems operate on different networks, use distinct data sets and are managed by various operators, yet their interdependence necessitates coordination.
Similarly, in an EOC, efficient coordination between several services such as emergency medical services (EMS), the fire department, law enforcement, 911 and emergency dispatch, public works and public health agencies is essential.
Control rooms and crisis rooms bring stakeholders together to share information in real-time and make quick decisions.
Efficient coordination between the various stakeholders is essential, especially as the volume of information that each department handles has grown exponentially.
Large video walls, integrated with KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) systems, significantly enhance coordination by allowing operators to work on remote computers and share data easily.
However, the complexity and cost of this technology can be daunting, particularly for smaller control centers.
The rapid evolution of AI-driven analytics, IoT devices and advanced surveillance systems can overwhelm existing infrastructure and staff.
Ensuring cybersecurity as control rooms become more digitized and attractive targets for cyber-attacks is another critical issue.
Maintaining continuity during unexpected disruptions, such as power outages, natural disasters or technical failures, can cripple control room operations.
Minimizing human errors, fatigue and high turnover, which can significantly impact the effectiveness of control room operations, is also crucial.
And finally, affordability is also a common concern as control rooms equipped with video walls have always been perceived as a massive investment.
Thankfully, this has changed due to recent technology developments.
AV-over-IP technology offers several significant advantages.
It is scalable by nature, providing lower initial costs with the flexibility for future expansion.
This flexibility allows for easy system growth by simply adding more encoders or decoders.
Additionally, AV-over-IP distributes processing power across the network, increasing capacity with the addition of each new encoder or decoder.
Lastly, the distributed nature of the system inherently provides redundancy, enhancing overall reliability and resilience.
Unlike mainstream applications, such as advertising or digital signage, control room video walls must adapt in real-time to evolving situations.
The sources displayed often come in various formats (IP cameras, remote computers, virtual machines, websites, dashboards, etc.), creating a perceived complexity.
However, video processing technology has come a long way in recent years and today’s latest innovations have introduced distributed AV-over-IP technology which has made video walls in control rooms more affordable, flexible and easy to use.
Traditional processing: to better understand the technology evolution, it is important to understand what traditional video wall processing technology looks like versus today’s distributed architecture.
Traditionally, control rooms use monolithic video wall processors with predefined inputs and outputs, requiring extensive planning for future needs.
This approach, coupled with matrix switches for KVM operator stations, is how most control rooms are equipped today.
Although expandable, these systems have limited input/output capacity and require separate control systems, often involving specialized programming for configuration changes.
Distributed processing: AV-over-IP technology simplifies control room infrastructure.
Sources are encoded and transmitted over standard networks to video wall processing systems composed of multiple multi-view processors.
These processors, installed behind each monitor or a set of monitors, create a single unified logical surface, allowing unlimited sources to be displayed across the video wall.
KVM encoders and multi-view decoders over a standard network further simplify and expand the system cost-effectively.
A centralized control system is essential for ease of use. There are typically two ways that this can be done.
The first is a programmatic approach, which involves preprogrammed routing scenarios that can be recalled via a touch panel.
With this option, every control room would have its own custom programmed control system.
The second and preferable option is a drag-and-drop interface, where scenarios are configured through easy drag-and-drop actions, saved for future use and recalled via customized touch panels that are also easily created within the system.
The latter provides an intuitive user interface that easily routes sources to destinations, such as IP cameras or dashboards to video walls or operator desktops.
Having a centralized and integrated control system via a single easy-to-use user interface provides several important benefits, especially for day-to-day operations: it reduces operator fatigue thus reducing human errors, it facilitates the onboarding of new operators in these high employee turnover environments, it improves response times as operators aren’t faced with complex menus and have an easy-to-use tool at their fingertips, as well as so much more.
Finally, a modern centralized control system should incorporate security protocols and be SOC 2 compliant, a common requirement in many of today’s control room projects, ensuring data integrity and secure operations.
The significant decrease in the cost of monitors and direct-view LED displays has made video walls more accessible to both large and small control rooms, improving efficiency and productivity.
Overcoming challenges in control rooms requires a multifaceted approach that combines technology, processes and human factors.
By strategically integrating advanced technologies, managing information effectively, maintaining operational continuity, enhancing interoperability and addressing human factors, security leaders can create resilient and efficient control room operations.
The transition to distributed AV-over-IP technology in control rooms, combined with an advanced centralized management system, enhances operational efficiency, flexibility and scalability.
By adopting these innovations, industries can improve their monitoring capabilities, decision-making processes and business continuity.
This article was originally published in the July edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.