By Mark R. Mayfield On July 31, 2012

For its refinery in Jamnagar, India, Reliance Petroleum partnered with Barco. The videowall of 198 display cubes now helps Reliance enhance control of the refinery complex and optimize safety.

Networks have transformed the capabilities of nearly every audiovisual application. Historically, AV meant cart-bound single devices like 35mm slide or overhead projectors wheeled into meeting rooms and classrooms. Today, of course, thanks to technologies such as ethernet and IP, modern devices can be permanently installed, linked together, and controlled on LANs, WANs, and even the public internet. Network connectivity has allowed AV technology to be used in ways never imagined even a decade ago, especially in applications where visual information is paramount, like operations centers.

When we think of an operations center control room, the typical image is NASA mission control, like the one in Houston, TX, at the Johnson Space Center. The Mission Control Center appears as a dazzling array of images and sound magically transmitted from and to outer space. Today’s control rooms in industrial, transportation, military, and corporate command/ control and operations centers are generally modeled on the same experience. But that’s all changing with the development of new technologies in networking, displays, and user interface devices. Even the conceptual limitation of confining control and monitoring to a “room” seems to be disappearing.

First, let’s be clear about what a control room is. Strictly speaking, it’s a place where events or activities can be remotely monitored and controlled by one or more individuals. And there are a lot of them, found in many types of organizations. Most municipalities have at least one control room or operations center, and according to the United Nations Statistics Division, there are nearly 4,000 cities “proper” with populations over 100,000. According to experts interview for this article, it’s safe to assume that every large corporation has some sort of sophisticated control room for its important assets. Every one of the world’s 44,000 airports has some type of command/ control center. Command/control centers are a common feature of the 1,000 U.S. military bases around the world.

Collaboration in the Control Room

But in recent years, where the emphasis has shifted from merely sharing information to collectively acting upon it—collaboration— the control room is evolving to become a collaboration space. Within the room, the star attraction is the multi-image display wall. But even that’s evolving.

“The display wall industry has traditionally been characterized as some array of displays with lots of information that we need for whatever our business might be — running a power plant, running a military organization, traffic control,” says Brady Bruce, vice president of marketing and strategic alliances with Jupiter Systems. “We all get together and stand in front of the display wall, and we look at that information. We point at it, and we say ‘that’s something we need to pay attention to, let’s fix that…’ The next logical question is, does anybody else need to see this information who can’t be in the room at the same time with us? And how can we do that?”

Bruce says this scenario led his company to ask questions about what it really means to share information, and even the meaning of the term “collaboration”. Especially in the dynamic control room environment, true collaboration requires more than just the ability to “co-view” information, he says.

“For us, collaboration means looking at the same video streams at the same time, perhaps far apart from each other, and the ability to annotate over those live video stream, not simply share a still image,” Bruce says. “Let’s talk about things happening right now. I ought to be able to share as much information or as many streams with you as I want to. And it shouldn’t matter what device you’re on. So if you happen to be in another control room, or on your laptop or tablet, we should be able to share information. So deviceagnostic without regard to geography — when I need your help, I need your help. We need to be able to interact on the same thing right now. That’s what collaboration is all about.”

Network Issues

Traditionally, the network has been limited to the role of one-way conduit to deliver source information to the videowall processor. As the literal and figurative centerpiece of any operations center, the multi-image display (or videowall) provides visualization of a nearly unlimited number of source images. In centralized configuration, sources can be direct-connected or delivered over IP networks into the videowall processor to be sized, positioned and displayed on the videowall. High-resolution video still presents a challenge for some networks, but this may be changing.

“There is certainly a trend to at least investigate transmitting video signals over a network when designing a control room, says RGB Spectrum’s executive vice president Scott Norder. “However, in many cases, contemporary IP networks are unable to accommodate uncompressed video at full frame rates and resolution. Information accuracy is critical in most control rooms and this requirement conflicts with the limitations of the bandwidth available on IP networks. Therefore, we see video to the displays over a separate video signal path and control running over the IP network.”

Recently, it’s become possible to use the network not only to receive sources, but also to share videowall content. But given the highly sensitive, mission-critical nature of most operations center control room applications, two familiar issues need to be addressed: network bandwidth and security.

According to Peter Bussens, Barco’s market director for controls rooms and simulation, these concerns can be addressed by using a dedicated network. “In most of these environments, people will choose a visualization AV network which is separate from the corporate network,” he says. “The reason for that is mainly to be able to control bandwidth availability and secondly for security aspects. But it’s not a necessity; we can and we do, in certain applications, run over the standard corporate network. And in most applications, we interface with the corporate network.”

Bussens points to Barco’s TransFormN, a control room management system consisting of I/O devices, servers, controllers, and software, as a versatile tool that allows this type of collaboration between networks. Barco calls the “networked visualization”. Connections between the visualization network and the corporate network are typically done at the network level (level 3 on the OSI 7 Layer model) using routers over a VPN (virtual private network).

Cloud computing offers tech managers the option to outsource many kinds of data processing including video, but given the nature of the highly-sensitive content common in control room applications, does the cloud make sense? Among IT pros and command/ control center operators, there is some debate about this, and it’s all centered on security. Earlier this year, Harris Corporation, the $6 billion communications technology company, announced that it is selling its super-secure data center in Harrisonburg, Virginia and leaving the “cloud computing” business. A February 28, 2012 press release stated that both its government and commercial customers prefer hosting “missioncritical information” on their own premises rather than in the cloud. Whether “private”, public, or hybrid, any cloud solution ultimately requires a data center that’s located somewhere, so it becomes a question of the data security expertise of the cloud solutions provider.

Mission Control Center, Johnson Space Center

RGB Spectrum’s Norder suggests security concerns, which have been front and center for the last decade, are finally being adequately addressed by IT providers. He says, “VPN technology and security has come a long way in the last decade, and information security over the WAN/Internet is well understood by most every IT professional. In most control rooms, IT defines the security strategies for local and remote resources, trains the users and management, and measures the success of the security schemes.”

Scalability

One of the great promises of cloud-based architectures is that you don’t have to invest in physical infrastructure that your organization may outgrow or may one day become obsolete. An advantage of a “networked visualization” platform like Barco’s TransFormN is the ability to easily add both sources and displays. Barco claims that systems that rely on fixed, physical chassis-based architectures restrict control room operators to a finite number of inputs and outputs, limiting expansion capability. But with a distributed architecture delivered over a standard IP network (like TransFormN), as needs grow, users can add virtually unlimited number of I/Os by simply linking additional external components.

Portable Control Rooms

The reality of network-based command/control room coupled with the explosion of mobile devices naturally leads to the question: Do control rooms really need to be rooms at all? Technology managers are being asked to provide mobile solutions for every other AV/ IT solution—is there demand for mobile control room functionality? It depends on who you ask.

“There’s a lot of hype around this [mobility] but we haven’t had requests for viewing applications for mobile technology,” says Barco’s Bussens. “But it’s something we’re looking at.” Of course, some technology managers see beyond the hype of mobile devices, and recognize the practical advantages such technologies offer. A CIO at a state police EOC (emergency operations center) commented, “As people become more dependent on video for situational awareness and forensic investigations, the need to do these tasks remotely or at the scene will continue to grow. As IT supporters we need to continue find ways to accommodate these needs system wide. Several of the application developers are implementing mobile tools in their environments.”

Jupiter is one of them. “Command/control rooms really haven’t been mobile, and they need to be,” says Brady Bruce. “A user may not need to see the whole wall. But if you want me to see something important, it’s probably one or a handful of streams, so that’s what you share.” Jupiter’s new Canvas system enables sources on the traditional display wall to be shared with colleagues in other rooms, or logged onto their PCs or mobile devices. It currently runs on the Windows 8 platform, but future plans will include iOS devices.

Mark R. Mayfield is an independent consultant, analyst, and writer in the communications technology industries. He can be reached at mmayf56@hotmail.com.

Reliance Petroleum Fact Sheet

• Exporting more than one million barrels of oil per day
• 1.6% of global nominal crude processing capacity
• 8 rear-projection video walls • Additional rear-projection wall in the crisis room
• Counting 198 display cubes of 67 inches with XGA resolution
• Desktop of 49152x3072 pixels visualizing all key performance indicators

(Source: Barco)

A Networked Visualization System

 

In a networked visualization system, sources (a road camera, a sensor, a computer, etc.) are connected to an encoder to get the video, images, or data into the secure IP-based system. The standard internet infrastructure will transport this information to anywhere there’s an internet connection. At the destination side, a decoder makes sure the information is ready for use on any display or videowall. Service nodes can be added to the network for additional processing.

 

Source: Barco

Best Practices for Control Rooms

Plan for mobility. Your constituents expect it everywhere else in the organization—it’s just a matter of time before control rooms go mobile.

Plan for growth. Consider a network-based approach to accommodate expansion.

Enable Collaboration. Look for ways to allow users to collaborate with their videowalls among colleagues, not just look at them together.

Keep it Safe. Security issues are paramount in the control room, since the visual display data is usually mission critical, real-time, and can sometimes save lives. Follow the most current IT best practices for securing VPNs and other networks. Use fiber optic signal distribution where feasible to prevent “eavesdropping” and problems caused by electromagnetic interference.