The latest media technology and system monitoring centralized on a future-proof network
Saarland’s police force is equipped for efficient and effective management of situations as part of its work and optimized coordination of operations thanks to its new, state-of-the-art command and situation center – and euromicron has been able to make a major contribution. euromicron solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of euromicron AG, was tasked by the general contractor Swissphone Telecom AG, based near Zurich, Switzerland, with equipping the active network and installing the media technology and system monitoring for the police force in the German federal state.
“Our task comprised complete coordination with the customer and the persons responsible for the other trades that were related to the network, as well as integration of these. The concrete mission was to ensure the technical functioning and operability of the command and situation center of Saarland’s police force with its components, consisting of the passive and active data network, network and system management, media technology and control, as well as the visualization and compression software,” explains Ingo Friese, head of euromicron solutions’ branch office in Stuttgart.
New and highly redundant active network infrastructure with system monitoring
A completely new active infrastructure for the control center was established using HP ProCurve switches. It had to have a highly redundant design so as to ensure the demanded network availability of 99.99%.
Existing copper cabling, which was likewise installed by euromicron solutions in an earlier project, was able to be used as the passive base for the network. This network was complemented in the course of the project by further copper and fiber-optic cable capacities in the tertiary and secondary area.
Network enables professional media technology and control
The media system for presenting, reproducing, recording and editing video and sound signals and for automated control and operation of the system is the heart of the new media equipment. Extensive visualization of a wide range of different media streams can be provided on large-area visualization panels from Panasonic at the operations center. The system also has a multi-image system with integrated crossbar functionality, two touch panels, which are responsible for controlling the media streams to be displayed at the director’s workstations, and sound processing and editing systems (DSP system).
“A recording server system and associated components are controlled and visualized by the project-specific system software – that creates overall a cutting-edge and future-proof media center,” says Friese.
The visualization and compression software VISKOM, which was tailored specifically to the needs of the command and situation center in cooperation with IBM, is used to present data from very diverse sources. Apart from television pictures and camera signals, VISKOM processes the data from the command and control system secur.CAD from Swissphone Systems GmbH and presents it on the visualization panels in special layouts.
Monitoring
ProCurve Manager Plus 3.0 was used for network monitoring. It backs up the switch configurations and monitors the individual switches. ProCurve Manager also offers a raft of features, among other things for monitoring utilization of the individual switch ports, checking the redundant links or controlling the workload on the components. A graphical representation of the network topology can also be called. Integrated system monitoring enables surveillance of the server and storage systems.
The 99.9% availability demanded for the network was verified by performance tests (load measurements) and extensive test scenarios. Both the software on the servers and the hardware were tested in the load measurements. The hardware used was able to demonstrate the merits of its redundant design and configured features in the test scenarios.
“Apart from the very tight timetable for the overall project, one particular challenge was customizing of the virtualization software to the police force’s needs,” explains Friese. However, the stringent security guidelines posed no obstacle for euromicron’s team technically or in terms of personnel: “The requirements for data security and documentation or encryption of correspondence were met in full – by colleagues who also passed the police’s security check in style,” states the branch office head.
Swissphone is a medium-sized, independent Swiss group and has around 350 employees. As a pioneer in the field of pager alerting, Swissphone has developed into a leading provider of mobile communications solutions since it was founded in 1969 and is committed to delivering the best solutions for its customers from industry, healthcare, public authorities and organizations that perform security tasks (BOS), pharmaceuticals and financial services. Its main business segment is the development, production and operation of mobile communications technologies. euromicron AG cooperated in the project “Command and situation center of Saarland’s police force” with Swissphone Systems GmbH, the Swissphone group’s competence center for control center system solutions.
euromicron AG is an all-round solution provider for communications, data and security networks. Its network infrastructures integrate voice, video and data transport wirelessly, via copper cable and by means of fiber-optic technologies. euromicron builds its leading applications, such as e-health, security, control or surveillance systems, on the basis of these network infrastructures.
Founded on its expertise as a developer and producer of fiber-optic components, euromicron AG is a strongly growing, highly profitable group that is listed on the stock market, has a medium-sized character and focuses on operational growth, integration and further market penetration, internationalization and expansion.