AV Technology - April 2009 - (Page 48)

yourworld law enforcement The front of the MC&CV holds a dispatch and tactical center with four workstations. Irvine’s Mobile Command & Control Vehicle EXTREME FLEXIBILITY AND SIMPLICITY WERE KEY DESIGN GOALS FOR THIS MOBILE COMMAND CENTER. By James Careless base radios so that we can operate, using standard dispatch software, on any channel in the Orange County Unified Communications System — city, fire, lifeguard, or sheriff.” The IPD chose this configuration to make it easy for dispatch staff to transition to the MC&CV easily, should something ever happen to the main dispatch center. The center compartment is the technical control area with two workstations, preview monitors, amateur radio, microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker, and sink. The rear compartment is the conference or negotiation room. “It has a laptop workstation, SMART Board, and equipment for our crisis negotiations team,” says Lt. Richardson. All of the three compartments are fitted with counters; a counter runs down the non-expanding wall as well. BUILT FOR TEAMWORK The MC&CV’s AMX NetLinx NI-4100 control system allows the operators to see what’s happening on each other’s desktops. “It allows us, through individual remote controls, to have the operators switch to whatever they want to see on one of their monitors,” says Lt. Richardson. “They can view sources such as computer-aided dispatch, satellite TV, off-the-air TV, one of our Sony mast-mounted cameras, or one of our deployable cameras. Cisco videoconferencing is available at two workstations tied to our Cisco VoIP phone system.” For viewing, the MC&CV is equipped with three 20-inch Samsung LCDs mounted in the overheads, an NEC 40-inch LCD display with SMART Touch overlay in the conference room, and a Samsung 32-inch flat panel HDTV on the outside of the MC&CV. The outside monitor is used for large group briefings. For additional conference monitoring, a bank of nine 4-inch LCD monitors allows for dedicated viewing of videoonly sources over the dispatch operators’ stations. Interconnectivity is provided by the MC&CV’s AMX/AutoPatch Modula switcher. If the NetLinx controller is the heart of the system, the modular router is the brain and nervous system of this dispatch center; linking together the MC&CV’s www.avtechnologyonline.com T hese days, most major police departments have their own mobile command vehicles. Fitted with radios, computers, and high-speed wireless links back to their departments’ main dispatch centers, these vehicles give incident commanders centralized control of their on-scene personnel. These vehicles can also be a platform for the tactical commander, negotiations teams, and event coordination. Unfortunately, most mobile command vehicles are seriously limited in their capabilities and working space. But such is not the case with the Irvine, CA Police Department’s advanced Mobile Command & Control Vehicle (MC&CV). “The project’s goal was to create a multi-purpose emergency command center that would be our mobile command center or, in a worst-case scenario, allow us to evacuate our building and keep operating,” explains Lt. Robert Richardson, with the Irvine Police Department’s Operational Support section. “We also wanted to be able to take this mobile command center to an incident scene and handle dispatch communications completely for the event; using our interoperable radio system. The Motorola Mobile Dispatch Consoles are capable of being used on any frequency in Orange County, and we also have amateur radio and commercial two-way radio to handle any possibility, independent of the main dispatch system.” CompView, a GSA contractor headquartered in Beaverton, OR with offices in southern California, was chosen as the AV systems integrator for the project. THE SCOPE Housed in a 45-foot body mounted on a Freightliner M2 truck chassis, the MC&CV has three separate compartments. Each is fitted with its own slide-out compartment to allow plenty of room for the people working. The front compartment is a dispatch and tactical center with four workstations. “Two Motorola Dispatch consoles were installed in a compact form that duplicates exactly what our dispatchers have in the station,” says Lt. Richardson. “We use 48 | AV TECHNOLOGY | april 2009 http://www.avtechnologyonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AV Technology - April 2009

AV Technology - April 2009 Contents Perspective: Lost in a Cloud Precedent Corporate: Seven Rules of Thumb for the AV Technology Manager Government: Collaboration Will Help Reshape Federal Agencies Education: Moving Day Managing Digital AV Content Audiovisual Untethered Irvine’s Mobile Command & Control Vehicle AV with a View Product Forum: Revolabs Fusion Wireless Mic System Product Spotlight: Network Test Equipment Tech Horizons: Ever Thinner New Products Ad Index AV MO: Power Consumption in AV Devices

AV Technology - April 2009

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