Bushfires stalled by giant fire screen

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 06:33

Business IT - Technology

The NSW Rural Fire Service has installed a video wall made up of 100 LCD screens in its state operations centre in Sydney. By using the screens to display everything from weather forecasts and fire fronts, to maps and live video feeds from helicopters, the service hopes it will have better information to help fight bushfires.

The system has already had its first live run during the recent bushfires in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney according to Fire Service spokesman Inspector Ben Shepherd.

Inspector Shepherd said that since 2005 the control room had displayed up to eight images projected onto a wall. Resolution however was limited, and on a bright day the images could be hard to see.

He said that the new system, which has been supplied by NEC Australia in association with Eo Design, allows much higher resolution, greater flexibility in terms of what could be displayed and in what form. The control room is often home to multiple personnel during a bush or grass fire and a broad sweep of information can be displayed on the wall to RFS personnel, people from the State Emergency Services, RTA, media or electricity providers he said.

'Since Victoria the main pressure has been to provide information to the public,' he said.

Although the main wall is comprised 100 LCD screens which are controlled from a central hub using a specially designed digital signal distribution system, the control room also features three large touchscreens and a high resolution mapping table. Content from those systems can also be displayed on the wall as required.

The digital video wall is supported by 14 computer systems, four dedicated servers and 32 digital video inputs including Digital Television, Sky News and a helicopter mounted camera system which can transmit video from the fire front back to the command centre video wall. The system was designed and installed over a period of seven weeks.