When you’re dialling 000, you’re probably not thinking about the technology behind the scenes that relays your call and manages disasters from the small scale to the world shaking. Keeping emergency responses ticking along is a high tech effort these days, as these pictures from inside Queensland’s Emergency Operations Centre show.
The complex is located at Kedron Park; here’s a shot of the disaster management centre (on the left), while the right houses the call centre. No photos inside the emergency management centre, but that makes sense; it’s pretty much always in use. Its primary coverage area is Brisbane, but it can take overflow calls from anywhere else in the state.
One thing that the emergency centre covers that might not immediately spring to mind when thinking about call centres is TV. These are the free to air boxes, but there’s also a similar rack for Foxtel as well. Each box gives dedicated coverage to a single channel. Not so much for keeping up with the world of entertainment, but more for keeping up with news to stay on top of any escalating emergencies as and when they happen. It’s not just TV; the display screens apparently have over 200 potential input sources they can draw from at any one time.
That’s one big, big display screen, claimed to be the largest of its type for this particular model of panel. No jokes about playing Crysis on it, please.
These are the neatest network cables I’ve ever seen. OK, they’re actually fibre optics rather than straight network cables. Everything, we’re told, is handled by fibre optic connections, even video — HDMI is said to be not fast enough. When you’re talking about an IT operation that’s responsible for saving people’s lives, I’m sure there’s no such thing as “fast enough” anyway.
An empty call centre; am I the only one getting a slight Men In Black vibe from here? It’s worth noting that no 000 centre would normally be this empty, but then we’re told this particular section won’t be up and running until the new year.
Thanks to Matthew for sending these through!