Electrosonic Europe

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TAQA Bratani is an exploration and production company working in the oil fields of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. One of its facilities is an Emergency Response Centre (ERC) located in Aberdeen, Scotland, which consists of an incident room, a control room and a relatives’ support suite. Oil companies with offshore sites have to be ready for any emergency, which means being able to relay, receive and analyze time-sensitive information as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Electrosonic engineered a visual display system that allows multiple sources to be processed and displayed in custom layouts on a large, central projection screen. This system assists the offshore North Sea site and organises the required external support during such emergencies.

The challenge of building a system that supports collaboration is that everyone must be able to share the same information while the source of key information continually changes. Traditionally, such rooms have used an overview display (or displays) with a relatively inflexible design in respect of display layout and image source selection.

For maximum flexibility, Electrosonic proposed that the most economical and effective solution would be to install a front projection screen and image processor. This allows for instant layout changes via software, and ensures the screen is legible and viewable by all participants on the floor. The resulting 3.6 x 2 meter screen, limited by room height, was completed by the fit-out contractor, Space Solutions, using a medium gain screen paint.

The projector is a Barco RLM-W6, which was selected because it offered sufficient resolution for the application, ample light output for the ambient light conditions and was quiet enough to be installed on a ceiling mount within the space itself. It is fed from a system that consists of a control computer and a Barco XDS-100 image processor. The latter is configured to receive images from any computer carrying the appropriate XDS license.

In principle anyone on the network can control the screen layout, although in practice it may be that only designated people do so. In the ERC, there is one position that acts as a principal control position for the display, and this is controlled by a 22 inch Smart Podium interactive touch screen managed by the team leader.

All events in the ERC, including all training, are monitored from the adjacent control room. From this room, observers can view the performance of participants via a security mirror window. A two camera surveillance system with full PTZ (Pan, Tilt and Zoom) control is installed, together with a Datavideo hard disc digital video recorder.

The ERC and the control room are under the control of a standard AMX room controller with desktop touchpanels. The audio system, based on full range ceiling loudspeakers, provides speech reinforcement for the team leader and playback for external programme sources.