Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Christie display solutions mission-critical for new Louisiana emergency operations centre

60x Christie Extreme Series 55in LCD panels – including a 4 x 4 video wall in the main operations centre – controlled by Christie Phoenix video wall controllers. Additional displays are installed in the director and assistant director’s offices, as well as the conference room and along the side walls of the centre

Christie is helping to deliver emergency operations and information sharing at the new Lafayette Parish Communication District in Louisiana, as a result of the installation of 60x Christie Extreme Series 55in LCD panels – including a 4 x 4 video wall in the main emergency operations centre – controlled by Christie Phoenix video wall controllers. Additional displays are installed in the director and assistant director’s offices, as well as the conference room and along the side walls of the centre. Interstate Electronic Systems (IES) selected and installed the system

Completed in 2020, the new, 23,000 square foot location replaces its former location in the basement of the Lafayette Parish Courthouse. The new emergency operations centre (EOC) provides emergency services, including a 911 communications centre, for Lafayette Parish residents.

“We chose Christie Phoenix because of its ‘distributed architecture’, which allowed us to build in redundancy with multiple processing nodes,” said Lloyd Francioni, managing partner, IES. “Redundancy is essential in any ‘mission critical’ facility. With other systems, if there’s a catastrophic failure, everything goes down. With the Phoenix, we can have a back-up node to take over processing.  If it goes down, the worst you can lose is two displays, not the entire wall. We stress very highly with 911 and EOCs, you have to have failsafe levels of redundancy.”

Craig Stansbury, homeland security/911 director, Lafayette Parish added: “We house the emergency operations centre here. Any time we have an incident, officials come to the building and get the information they need to make informed decisions for the people of Lafayette Parish. After an incident, like a hurricane, this is where we would meet and assess the damages and respond accordingly. We collect damage assessment information and we forward that information over to the State of Louisiana who in turn forwards to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency).

“We can disseminate information throughout the building to different locations. One of the most important things is versatility – we can bring in different types of information. We have a CAD (computer aided dispatch) system through 911, and we can show through this system where all the police, fire and first responders’ units are on a map on our video wall.

“Our team worked very well with IES, and IES went above and beyond. They were a pleasure to work with. The AV system is the key to bringing information to officials, before, during and after an incident; it helps us to take care of the citizens of Lafayette Parish. It’s probably one of the most important systems we have to be able to do our jobs.”