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| On location, in control |
| by Alicia Zappier |
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December 10, 2008
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To help serve the more than three million citizens in Orange County, CA, the Irvine Police Department recently commissioned a custom-built, 45-foot mobile command and control vehicle. Its primary objectives are helping at aircraft crashes, major traffic collisions, crimes already in progress, natural disasters, and major crime scenes.
Manufactured by Renegade Specialty Vehicles in Bristol, IN, the truck serves as a general tool for Irvines overall emergency management plan. Communication is the biggest factor when you need to coordinate resources and a response to something major, whether its a natural disaster, a plane crash, or even something routine like a SWAT response, said Sgt. Mike Hallinan with the Irvine PD, who was instrumental in launching the vehicle.
Hallinan worked closely with CompView, the integrator for the truck, which took roughly one year to design and build. The most challenging part in integrating the equipment in the mobile command and control vehicle was selecting the right audio-visual equipment to withstand variations in movement, vibration, temperature, and electrical power, said Jeffrey D. Kaylor, CTS, systems integration manager and senior design engineer at CompView.
User flexibility was also important. The trucks design concept, dubbed the Virtual Information System by Kaylor, allows any of the information sources to be available to anyone at any time on a moments notice.
The vehicle is divided into four main areas: the communications and dispatch area, conference room, outside workstation, and galley. These areas were designed to resemble an emergency dispatch station so hostage negotiators, crisis negotiators, and SWAT team members can easily find their way around, said Lt. Rick Handfield, press liaison for the Irvine PD.
The communications and dispatch area includes six operations stations, each with a 22-inch Dell widescreen monitor that feeds info in real time from
the Internet and police reports. The area also includes an overhead compartment with three 22- inch Samsung LCD monitors.
During an emergency, the area is especially useful because we can evacuate our police station and have our dispatchers seamlessly sit here, explained Hallinan. There are two consoles here, like in the police department dispatch
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The Irvine Police Department recently commissioned a new 45-foot mobile command and control vehicle to improve response to events.
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room, with the same equipment. So the dispatchers can come down, plug in their headsets, and go to work.
The conference room houses a 40-inch NEC LCD display with a SMART Board, which serves as a media display and an interactive whiteboard for highlighting tactics. The outside workstation includes a Samsung 32-inch LCD monitor for accessing media reports. It flips down like a table, so SWAT people can connect their phones if they need to do a negotiation with a suspect on the scene, Hallinan said.
All the areas are controlled by an AMX wireless color touch panel, which can route all sources to any display. The touch panel is housed in the vehicles galley, and it can be taken outside the vehicle for use during briefings. The galley also includes two computer workstations with a Cisco switcher, so personnel can switch video and computer signals, and nine preview monitors.
The truck isnt occupied every day. When not in use, its housed at a local fire department in Irvine, CA, or outside of police headquarters. It also serves as an important regional asset that can be used by other organizations.
Earthquake mobility is a huge asset, Handfield said. Vehicles like this can play an important role in events, whether theyre planned or unplanned. You never know what type of help is going to show up. ★
SATELLITE SAVVY
The Irvine Police Departments new mobile command vehicle stays connected using satellite technology. We use a 4.9 MHz public safety system that allows us to deploy video and data, so we can make a video link and transmit live video feeds from a disaster. Because everything is connected, we can have virtual meetings, said Sgt. Mike Hallinan. The truck has excellent video, data, and radio capability. And the satellite technology is one step above microwave. The truck also contains a mix of HD and SD technology. The signals coming in are both HD and analog, so you have to be able to pull them up either way, Hallinan added.
MORE INFO
AMX amx.com
Cisco Systems cisco.com
CompView compview.com
Dell dell.com
Extron Electronics extron.com
NEC nec.com
Samsung samsung.com
SMART Technologies smarttech.com
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