Aetria: The scalable and future- proof control room solution

Awareness of how audio visual solutions can help consolidate control room operations, improve team collaboration and increase situational awareness for operators is growing, but is still far from comprehensive.

It means traditional control rooms often lack the scalability and flexibility required to accommodate future technological advancements and changing operational needs. With emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and automation becoming more prevalent – along with the vast data volumes of today and tomorrow – control rooms need to have the infrastructure and capabilities to integrate and adapt to future developments.

The increase in data volumes changes the control room landscape
Data continues to increase exponentially in today’s data-driven world. Control rooms must keep up with managing and monitoring sources and video feeds from various operations, presenting challenges for operators to effectively handle this huge influx of information. The volume of data is often now too large for ‘traditional’ systems to manage effectively.

At the same time, consolidation of control room operations is happening both functionally and geographically. Where separate, smaller control rooms are being brought together into a single, centralised control room for improved communication and collaboration.

An example of this consolidation is in airports, where the amalgamation of emergency services, baggage handling, immigration, flight control, and other operations are being combined into a central Airport Operations Centre. Similar activities are happening in the power utilities sector, for electrical generation and distribution, oil and gas production facilities, and rail traffic management.

Due to this, challenges arise around how to migrate, organise, and control all of the data sources required for each function. There are still huge challenges around how critical information is made available to operators in and out of the control room. As the data volume increases, solutions like Aetria are needed to help operators make sense of it. With Aetria, sources can be distributed to where they are needed throughout the control room environment. This allows operators access to the right information at the right time so they can take appropriate action.

The need for an integrated and consolidated control room solution
Many control rooms are designed around a number of specific applications, usually involving a single systems vendor for a particular type of function, which serve as the core application(s) across the overall operation. Meanwhile, other complimentary data sources need to be monitored and controlled alongside these core applications, such as CCTV cameras, web pages, TV feeds, and other external third-party systems. These can bring a variety of technical, commercial, and legal hurdles to overcome to enable integration in the control room.

As a result, control rooms are struggling with outdated technologies and design principles, lacking the necessary tools and information displays to provide to operators. Limited situational awareness, inefficient workflows, and frustrated operators have a knock-on effect on response times, and the ability to make the best decisions.

A consolidated, centralised AV solution like Aetria makes it easy for control room operators to view and interact with a variety of data sources and IT systems from multiple vendors, and provides a consolidated platform that’s easy to manage, maintain, and which can evolve with newer technologies over time.

The developments of data visualisation and control
The adoption of AVoIP technology continues at a pace, playing a crucial role in ensuring seamless communication and efficient operations. This technology enables transmission of high-quality audio and video signals over a network infrastructure, allowing for realtime monitoring, collaboration, and decision-making.

AVoIP, with or without keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) functionality, is replacing basic video matrix switching and at the same time enabling connectivity with remote workers and between control centres.

How operators can view that data is also evolving, as more control rooms are opting for larger workstations with more data sources available for individual operators, to provide better situational awareness at an individual operator level.

Meanwhile, larger video walls for the whole control centre are being replaced with smaller video walls and/or individual large displays for sharing between smaller groups of operators.

This is where Datapath’s Aligo and Arqa transmitters and receivers are integrated with Aetria to enable full AVoIP with KVM functionality. Anything, anywhere, with complete content control.

System integrators and end-users are able to visit one of several Aetria showrooms around the world, such as this facility at Innovation House in the UK

Requirements for 24/7 operations
A key requirement for many critical services and applications that need to be consistently available to users is ‘high availability’ – the ability for a system or network to remain operational and accessible for an extended period of time, typically without any noticeable downtime or interruptions. Achieving high availability involves implementing redundancy and fault tolerance mechanisms throughout the infrastructure. This often includes redundant hardware components, such as servers, network devices, and storage systems, as well as robust software configurations that can withstand potential failures.

Datapath’s Aetria solution has been designed from the ground up for the most critical control room applications. As part of this, all Aetria installations are equipped with redundant wall controllers and network managers. This means that all video wall, workstation, and data source configurations are automatically transferred to backup systems, ensuring a continuation of operations.

Last, but not least
Probably the most important element to a control room operation is security. This becomes amplified further when vast amounts of potentially sensitive data is being sent and received over a network. With Aetria, all connections between connected devices are secured with enterprise grade AES encryption, and all user and API connections use TLS encryption, ensuring all information remains safe in the hands of permitted operators.

Talk to the Datapath team
Datapath solutions have been utilised around the world, from large scale prestigious applications to the most mission critical command and control environments.

Datapath
Tel: +44 (0) 1332 294441
Email: sales@datapath.co.uk
Web: https://www.datapath.co.uk/datapath-products/aetria-control-room-solutions/aetria-overview/