Applying “smart city” technology provided by RGB Spectrum, California’s Contra Costa County has launched a new emergency operations center (EOC) featuring an emergency situation room (ESR) equipped with real-time visualization technology.

Smart cities are powered by data shared between municipal entities — public transportation, traffic management systems, utilities infrastructure, law enforcement, public safety, emergency services and city planning — which exchange knowledge on a common platform. Data sources can include vehicle movement, municipal energy use, local water distribution, surveillance cameras, and dynamic regional maps. Visuals and other information are aggregated and disseminated to all stakeholders, providing shared actionable data for improved collaborative decision making, coordination and planning.

To implement smart city technology, Contra Costa County uses a combination of RGB’s Galileo display wall processor coupled with its Zio AV-over-IP platform. The ESR uses a 32 ft. x 14 ft. video wall powered by the Galileo video wall processor. The video wall is comprised of 48 55-in. LCD screens in an 8-wide by 6-high array, flanked by four 86-in. auxiliary displays interspersed throughout the room. The processor consolidates visuals and data to provide a centralized, correlated common operating picture on the video wall.

Data are shared with offsite agencies including the county sheriff’s office, police, fire, emergency services, public works, and city emergency operations centers within the county via IP video streams on local area (LAN) and wide area (WAN) networks, with a VPN for added security. The Galileo processor can directly receive and display IP streams from Zio encoders, as well as IP cameras, and other H.264 devices.

"It is extremely important for EOC personnel to be able to assess an incident and then make decisions on where to deploy critical resources,” said Rich Kovar, emergency services manager for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office. “The new system expands our capabilities and maximizes situational awareness in multiple ways. The video wall is key for achieving this.”

He added, “We have fire cameras across the county and can show the feeds live on the video wall. Other resources include GIS maps that display power outages and a wildfire map that indicates hotspots. RGB Spectrum’s AV-over-IT platform allows us to share a common operating picture throughout the facility and beyond.”

Bob Marcus, president and CEO of RGB Spectrum, said, “Building upon RGB Spectrum’s easily expandable platform, Contra Costa County has enabled workflows to be shared citywide, enabling stakeholders and outside agencies to quickly access EOC resources, contribute their own local resources and collaborate more effectively. RGB Spectrum’s Galileo video wall processor and Zio AV-over-IP platform are ideal solutions for smart city operations.”