Christie AV Solutions at Lafayette's New Emergency Operations Center

For this Project of the Lafayette Communications and Operations Center (Us.) sixty LCD panels of 55 have been installed″ of the Extreme Series of Christie, with a combined bezel width of 1,7 Mm.

The American city of Lafayette, in the state of Louisiana, has recently opened a new Communications Center, with a surface area of 7.000 m2, from which they manage emergency services, including a centre 911.

As he explains Craig Stansbury, Lafayette's Director of Homeland Security/911, “this is where we house the emergency operations center (EOC, (English)). Every time we have an incident, officials come to the building and get the information they need to make informed decisions for the people of Lafayette.",

When an incident occurs, “we quickly meet, we assess the damage and respond accordingly," says Stansbury.. We collect damage assessment information and send it to the state of Louisiana, which in turn sends it to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)".

The new center has been equipped with LCD screens of the series Christie Extreme, With Phoenix processors from this manufacturer, that are used to visualize critical information related to performing emergency operations, services 911 and exchange of information.

The specialist Interstate Electronic Systems (IES) has been responsible for audiovisual integration, for which he specified and installed a total of sixty 55 LCD panels″ of the Christie Extreme series, with a combined bezel width of only 1,7 Mm.

For the main emergency operations center, a videowall has been installed, in configuration 4×4, with screens in 2×1 mounted along the side walls. In addition, in the operations center of the 911 four screens are located in configuration 2×2.

Additional display screens have also been installed in the offices of the director and deputy director, as well as in the conference room. Phoenix and Phoenix Quad-T by Christie.

"We chose Christie Phoenix because of its 'distributed architecture', that allowed us to incorporate redundancy with multiple processing nodes, which is essential in any mission-critical facility”, Ensures Lloyd Francioni, managing partner of IES.

In this sense and with respect to other systems that fall 'fall'’ in the face of failures, “with Phoenix we can have a node of Backup to take care of the processing. If it falls, the worst thing that can happen is that two screens are turned off, not all videowall. We are especially detail-oriented when working in emergency operations centers and units. 911, as they must have fail-safe redundancy levels".

The new system “allows us to disseminate information throughout the building to different locations," adds Lafayette's director of homeland security/911.. One of the most important things is versatility: we may incorporate different types of information”.

As Stansbury emphasizes, “we have a CAD system through the 911, thanks to which we can show where all the police units are, firefighters and lifeguards on a map in our videowall. This system is key to providing information to officials earlier., during and after an incident; helps us take care of the citizens of Lafayette Parish and be able to do our job.".

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