Case Study - Queensland Emergency Operations Centre

The Queensland Emergency Operations Centre (QEOC) boasts world class Command and Control systems

Queensland, Australia is a huge State, with terrain stretching from equatorial rainforest in the north through savannah and rangelands to desert in the far west. The major cities are spread out along 2,000km of coastline and although Queensland is blessed with abundant natural resources, the population of some four and a half million regularly faces enormous threat from cyclone, flood and bushfire. Dealing with natural disasters across an area of nearly one and three quarter million square kilometres requires a significant command and control infrastructure.

Thanks to an innovative design by Brisbane based Professional AV Systems Integrator, Advanced Video Integration and AMX digital video and control technology, the $78m Queensland Emergency Operations Centre (QEOC) now boasts world class switching and display systems so decision makers can view broadcast feeds and signals from first response vehicles on the spot wherever an emergency is unfolding.

The centre was designed to co-ordinate multiple services as they respond to an emergency or disaster situation that may be thousands of kilometres away, but no-one imagined it would face its greatest test before the building was completed.

Project requirements

• A total of 206 input devices and 158 displays to be connected, any input to any output, via a campus wide video and audio routing system.
• Separate communications centres for Fire and Ambulance services, each built around enormous 24 screen central videowall displays, plus three more videowalls for the State Disaster Management Centre which needed comprehensive presentation and videoconference facilities.
• Rounding out the specification was a requirement for a full IPTV system which was to include recording and automatic archiving of content.

Each of the 35 operational rooms needed the capability to call up live broadcast coverage of any unfolding disaster, content from any of the vast array of building wide computer assets, and also had to be able to access any of the hundreds of traffic cameras operated by other departments and pictures transmitted from emergency response vehicles on site.