control rooms Right: the classical


facade of Sweden’s national police headquarters in


Stockholm. A large modern extension, which includes


the command and


control centre, is to the rear


certain areas on the map where the current incident is, where the resources are.” Te desks, built by a specialist company, are used at all


Sweden’s police control rooms. Each one can be adjusted electrically by a keypad which raises and lowers the screen platform and the main desk area independently. Operators of every size and operating habit can be accommodated, even if they prefer to work standing up. No cabling is visible anywhere; plugs and sockets are all on concealed panels. “Our goal is to standardize not just the systems but all the


equipment as well”, comments Janis. “So they have the same tables, the same keyboard, mice, screens, everything. It’s a lot cheaper to maintain standardized systems than if everyone has their own.”


Incident handling Call-taking and dispatching are handled by the same operators. Each workstation is equipped with three screens, and the operators can arrange the screen layouts just as they wish. Settings such as window sizes and colours are saved to their personal login card so that they re-load them the next time they sign on. Nevertheless, the usual arrangement is to use the right-hand screen for mapping, the middle one for the Steria Storm command and control system (which registers each incident and manages resource planning


Headsets for hush A


striking feature of the Stockholm control room is its hushed working environment. “I’ve been in many different control rooms in different


organizations and this is by far the quietest”, says Janis Lövgren, system architect. “Even during big incidents it is very quiet and people just work.” Steve Denison, of APD Communications, which supplied the control


room’s Cortex radio and telecoms subsystems, comments: “We took the first Emirates airline room live probably a couple of years ago now, and I must confess I was hesitant to make my normal claim that, when you put Cortex in, it will quieten down, because it was pretty quiet anyway. “At that point, they were using free-issue radios and gooseneck


microphones. But when they did put in, it actually got quieter still. “I wouldn’t like to say how it


compares with this – but the integration and the common headset working with Cortex does make it quieter. I would imagine that countries using a different model, like Germany, are quite different because they do a lot of monitoring on speakers.” “We do prefer using a headset”,


Steve Denison, APD Communications: “I was hesitant to make my usual claim...”


responds Janis. “The German way of using up to 12 or 16 speakers for audio monitoring purposes seems a bit... well, we’ve heard of audio mixing! I do know quite a few people working there, but I haven’t managed to track down anyone who can explain what are the operational benefits!”


26


and deployment), and the left-hand screen for Cortex, the integrated communications control system (ICCS) supplied by APD Communications. Unsually, these three functions are combined within a single computer for each desk – an integration project implemented in-house by the Swedish police technical team. Operation is by keyboard and mouse. Cortex was added to the existing control room systems in


2006 to support the TETRA radio platform. Trough the Cortex screen, operators can access telephone circuits and radio talkgroups – not only on the Rakel TETRA network, but also on analogue radio. Similar workstations are also installed in a smaller standby


control room located elsewhere, and in a separate area which is used for managing planned events, such as football matches or music festivals. In addition, it can be used for major police operations, to separate them from the everyday routine. “If you have a big incident like an unplanned withdrawal of large amounts of cash, that would probably move to a separate room”, says Janis, dryly. “When the fallback room is not in use for day-to-day


operations, it is used for training”, he adds. “So we keep them up to date at all times. Otherwise there is no point in having a secondary control room.” Steve Denison, APD’s managing director, who is also


visiting the control centre, observes: “Where people have fallback rooms, there is always the risk that, by the time they come to need it, somebody has borrowed a few bits!”


Going live Sweden’s TETRA project was under way as long ago as 2001, but the project to update the command and control room systems of the county police forces, to adapt their old Ericsson analogue radio systems and to connect to TETRA, began in 2005. Te new digital network went live in the following year, initially in the southern city of Malmö.


TE TRA TODAY Issue 6 2012


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