Electrosonic installed systems in the incident management room, management conference room, breakout room, joint information center, media distribution system, director’s office, staff break room, and lobby of Santa Barbara’s new EOC. (Inset) A mobile tablet device operating on the building’s secured WiFi network allows the control of the majority the systems with a graphically intuitive user control system interface. LOS ANGELES, CA—Electrosonic provided extensive audio, video, and data information support to the County of Santa Barbara’s new Emergency Operations Center (EOC ), which houses a number of technologyenabled spaces designed to help the California county maintain a constant state of readiness. Electrosonic equipped the permanent home of the Office of Emergency Management with presentation, videoconferencing, and streaming video
capabilities.
“Santa Barbara County went from a 1,600-square-foot trailer with a projector and a small TV to a new 11,000-squarefoot building powered in part by green energy,” said Electrosonic project manager Jeff Galato, Sr. The new EOC facilitates the sharing of information from various internal and external sources, whether it’s news media, incident maps from geospatial services, live video streams from a county helicopter, or operational reports. Having critical information displayed and shared—via large display screens, flat-panel monitors, or videoconferencing systems—improves management decisions.
Electrosonic’s role encompassed installations in the incident management room, management conference room, breakout room, joint information center, media distribution system, director’s office, staff break room, and lobby. In addition to Galato, the Electrosonic EOC project staff was comprised of sales consultant Richard Dussaigne, along with Rob Perry, Fred Scripture, Liz Lopez, and Oliver Pemberton.
A mobile tablet device operating on the building’s secured WiFi network allows the EOC to control the majority of its systems with a graphically intuitive user control system interface. The tablet not only controls all AV components and displays throughout the EOC , but it more importantly provides the staff with complete control of the new system right at their fingertips, allowing them to focus more on making quick emergency response decisions.
At the heart of the EOC is the incident management room, the main operations center for the county’s emergency management staff. Designed with flexible seating configurations for approximately 40 people from county and municipal agencies, the room features AV presentation technologies that can help meet an array of incident needs. The primary display consists of three wall-mounted frontprojection screens to accommodate widescreen images from three ceiling-mounted Mitsubishi video projectors. All source and routing/ processing equipment is housed in an equipment rack in the telecommunications room.
The management conference room and the breakout room can both host up to 16 participants, and feature AV systems that accommodate synchronous videoconferencing and multimedia presentation. They each feature a 70-inch, wall-mounted Sharp flat-panel display for use with presentation materials, and the management conference room has an additional two 55-inch wall-mounted NEC flat-panel displays for videoconferencing. A flip-top cable enclosure in each conference room table has inputs for a laptop and portable AV sources. Each room features a single OFCI HD pan/tilt/zoom Sony HD1 camera. All rackmounted equipment in both meeting rooms is housed in custom credenzas inside each room.
The Joint Information Center, which acts as the primary public information office, displays the status during an emergency to enable public information officers to distribute critical updates to the general public. Electrosonic provided a ceilingmounted Mitsubishi video/data projector as the primary display, and a wall-mounted NEC flat-panel to serve as a backdrop for press. As in the meeting rooms, this space also offers a flip-top cable enclosure and a custom equipment credenza.
