Mission

Queensland integrator Advanced Video Integration (AVI) was proud to be helping the State Government prepare for future disasters with a comprehensive video wall, video conference and signal routing project in the new state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Centre.

Project Details

Midwich were enlisted to design and supply a large-scale-mission critical video wall and advanced processing solution.

The project was huge, comprising separate communications centres for Fire and Ambulance services, each with a massive 24-screen central video wall display (designed and supplied by Midwich), plus the State Disaster Management Centre comprising multiple coordination hubs with comprehensive presentation (including three more video walls) and video conference facilities. A total of 206 input sources and 158 displays were to be tied together.

The operational rooms needed to be able to call up live broadcast coverage of any unfolding disaster, but also had to be able to access any of the hundreds of traffic cameras.

Disaster

Part way through the build, the future became the present as the worst floods for a generation inundated the state. Suddenly, the Operations Centre was needed right now and the AVI installation team became part of the crisis response, frantically hand-patching feeds in real-time to emergency teams coping with an unprecedented scale of destruction. Then, with the crew at full stretch, they became part of the crisis itself as metres of muddy floodwater engulfed their Milton headquarters, devastating workshops, stores and IT systems.

Outcome

AVI are a Midwich partner and utilised their on-site support allowance to obtain technical assistance. Midwich Technical Director Nic Beavis spent 3-days on-site providing technical assistance and commissioning services of the video wall.

How the AV channel managed to beat the odds is a classic Queensland story that is already passing into audio-visual folklore.