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Video walls delivering command and control for fire and rescue ops

The Bouches-du-Rhône Fire and Rescue Department in the south of France has integrated digital signage video walls in its emergency response center to manage key information in order to respond as quickly as possible during emergencies on the ground, according to a case study from video wall controller board provider Matrox.

May 1, 2015 by Christopher Hall — w, t

The Bouches-du-Rhône Fire and Rescue Department — a.k.a. the Service Departmental D'incendie et Secours des Bouches-du-Rhône, or SDIS 13 — in the south of France is involved in more than 115,000 interventions annually — including 6,481 fires in 2014.

The SDIS 13's regional command headquarters, located in Marseille, France, is responsible for overseeing operations for 62 fire stations serving most of the 5,087-square-kilometer (1,964-square-mile) Bouches-du-Rhône territory. Faced with a growing influx of real-time video and data in its emergency response center, SDIS 13 has integrated two new digital signage video walls in the emergency response center to manage key information in order to respond as quickly as possible during emergencies on the ground, according to a case study from video wall controller board provider Matrox.

"Our plan was to install two video walls to facilitate decision-making," SDIS 13 Commander Didier Margotto, head of the emergency response center, said in the case study. "A large one in our action room to monitor ongoing interventions and operations, and a smaller one in our reflection room to focus on critical problems or manage additional crisis situations."

The SDIS 13 chose French video wall experts Agelec to design and integrate the video walls in its emergency response center, in order to monitor ongoing interventions and operations across this largely urban area of France. The video walls are driven by Matrox Mura MPX cards — installed within Agelec AGCWALL video wall processors — to capture and display real-time, high-quality video and data from multiple sources on a large 12-display wall and a smaller four-display wall, according to the case study. Agelec's AGCTOUCH control software completed the installation, with an intuitive touchscreen interface adapted to meet the client's needs.

The SDIS 13 favored new large-format LCD displays with ultra-thin bezels, and the control room installation would require a custom support structure for these displays, to fit them in a constrained space, Matroxsaid. Also, the winning video wall-processing solution would have to capture and display a wide variety of video sources on both walls, according to the case study. Source content would include camera footage from Firewatch fire-detection cameras, HD video from aerial forest surveillance cameras, Sony dome IP cameras and video conferencing. A TV tuner input would provide breaking news and other updates. Météo Plus weather maps and maps showing physical features and roadways also would be shown. Hundreds of Internet sources, data from virtual private networks, and video from remote PCs would need to be easily accessible — as would SDIS 13's dedicated software tools such as automatic wildfire detection systems, strike team alerts and dispatches, fire evaluation and monitoring, ops management, 2D/3D mapping and localization with data integration. SDIS 13 opted to deploy Agelec's AGCWALL video wall processors, which incorporate Matrox Mura MPX PCIe boards to capture and display real-time, high-quality video and data from multiple sources.

"We appreciate the flexibility of having both inputs and outputs on a single Matrox Mura MPX board and the large number of formats that these boards can handle," Agelec CEO Jean-Michel Lanco said. "[The] boards perform really well and are easy to install, not to mention being totally compatible with our AGCTOUCH software — we have used these with great success in many multi-input, multi-output video wall projects."

The SDIS 13 video walls were built with 50-inch X551UN displays from NEC Display Solutions and a custom support structure provided by Agelec. The main wall includes 12 displays in a four-by-three configuration. Thesmall wall comprises four displays in a two-by-two configuration. "The NEC displays chosen for this project provide ultra-narrow bezels (5.7mm content to content) and superior-quality readability," Lanco said.

The video wall processors were placed in an equipment room located behind the displays, together with some sources connected directly to Mura MPX boards. Additional sources found outside the equipment room are connected to the video wall processor using CAT6 extenders.

SDIS 13 controls its video wall layouts using a customized version of Agelec's AGCTOUCH software running on touchscreen displays. The software allows SDIS 13 staff to position, switch and zoom in on different content, using a 32-inch screen to control the smaller wall and a 46-inch screen for the larger one, the case study said.

"Video wall deployments like this one in this emergency response center require a video wall processor or controller that can capture and display a variety of different source types including baseband sources like TV feeds (including protected content feeds) or PCs and streaming sources like IP cameras or encoded desktops from other sites," said Sam Recine, Matrox Graphics sales director - America and Asia Pacific, in an email to Digital Signage Today. "For operators to benefit from the collaborative capabilities of the video wall, an additional requirement is easy-to-use software that allows operators to quickly view multiple sources and to manage how they are displayed. High quality scaling helps maps and fine text appear clearly on large surfaces. Matrox products for video wall controllers are designed to offer both flexible source capture and high-quality display. Matrox software development tools are essential for many installations - helping our partners develop turnkey solutions with customized software that takes advantage of our hardware strengths."

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