Extreme flexibility and simplicity were key design goals for this mobile command center. These days, most major police departments have their own mobile command vehicles. Fitted with radios, computers, and high-speed wireless links back to their departments’ main dispatch centers, these vehicles give incident commanders centralized control of their on-scene personnel. These vehicles can also be a platform for the tactical commander, negotiations teams, and event coordination.

Unfortunately, most mobile command vehicles are seriously limited in their capabilities and working space. But such is not the case with the Irvine, CA Police Department’s advanced Mobile Command & Control Vehicle (MC&CV). “The project’s goal was to create a multi-purpose emergency command center that would be our mobile command center or, in a worst-case scenario, allow us to evacuate our building and keep operating,” explains Lt. Robert Richardson, with the Irvine Police Department’s Operational Support section. “We also wanted to be able

The front of the MC&CV holds a dispatch and tactical center with four workstations.

to take this mobile command center to an incident scene and handle dispatch communications completely for the event; using our interoperable radio system. The Motorola Mobile Dispatch Consoles are capable of being used on any frequency in Orange County, and we also have amateur radio and commercial two-way radio to handle any possibility, independent of the main dispatch system.” CompView, a GSA contractor headquartered in Beaverton, OR with offices in southern California, was chosen as the AV systems integrator for the project.

THE SCOPE
Housed in a 45-foot body mounted on a Freightliner M2 truck chassis, the MC&CV has three separate compartments. Each is fitted with its own slide-out compartment to allow plenty of room for the people working.

The front compartment is a dispatch and tactical center with four workstations. “Two Motorola Dispatch consoles were installed in a compact form that duplicates exactly what our dispatchers have in the station,” says Lt. Richardson. “We use base radios so that we can operate, using standard dispatch software, on any channel in the Orange County Unified Communications System — city, fire, lifeguard, or sheriff.” The IPD chose this configuration to make it easy for dispatch staff to transition to the MC&CV easily, should something ever happen to the main dispatch center.

The center compartment is the technical control area with two workstations, preview monitors, amateur radio, microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker, and sink. The rear compartment is the conference or negotiation room. “It has a laptop workstation, SMART Board, and equipment for our crisis negotiations team,” says Lt. Richardson. All of the three compartments are fitted with counters; a counter runs down the non-expanding wall as well.

BUILT FOR TEAMWORK
The MC&CV’s AMX NetLinx NI-4100 control system allows the operators to see what’s happening on each other’s desktops. “It allows us, through individual remote controls, to have the operators switch to whatever they want to see on one of their monitors,” says Lt. Richardson. “They can view sources such as computer-aided dispatch, satellite TV, off-the-air TV, one of our Sony mast-mounted cameras, or one of our deployable cameras. Cisco videoconferencing is available at two workstations tied to our Cisco VoIP phone system.”

For viewing, the MC&CV is equipped with three 20-inch Samsung LCDs mounted in the overheads, an NEC 40-inch LCD display with SMART Touch overlay in the conference room, and a Samsung 32-inch flat panel HDTV on the outside of the MC&CV. The outside monitor is used for large group briefings. For additional conference monitoring, a bank of nine 4-inch LCD monitors allows for dedicated viewing of videoonly sources over the dispatch operators’ stations.

Interconnectivity is provided by the MC&CV’s AMX/AutoPatch Modula switcher. If the NetLinx controller is the heart of the system, the modular router is the brain and nervous system of this dispatch center; linking together the MC&CV’s servers, workstations, displays, handheld controllers, VBrick MPEG-4 decoders, three satellite receivers, and external communications system.

Switching between video/data streams is managed at each workstation using the AMX Mio Modero Elite DL 12-button panels with LCD screen. They communicate via the MC&CV’s NetLinx controller. A wireless AMX MVP-8400, acting as the master interface, controls all AV functions in the vehicle, including the external 32-inch flat panel, which is used for briefing officers and/or reporters. However, the video on the handheld AMX handheld is so sharp that officers often rely on it instead, rather than using the big display.

The command center communicates with the outside world by satellite, 4.9 GHz radio, and cellular phone networks. It can also anchor an ad hoc VoIP system. “In addition to the wall-mounted phones we have a table phone for crisis negotiations and three Cisco VoIP wireless phones,” Lt. Richardson says.

FUTURE-PROOF…AND FOOLPROOF, TOO
The MC&CV has been designed to allow easy upgrades. For instance, “We used an AMX/ AutoPatch Modula switcher system than can be expanded simply by adding more cards,” says CompView senior design engineer Jeff Kaylor; one of the companies that aided the IPD in building the MC&CV. “We are also using open architecture technology that allows for multiple vendors to supply equipment, and an IP-based communications system that allows the importing of video from various sources, including dash cams.”

“In all honesty, Irvine’s MC&CV is a step beyond most mobile command systems,” Kaylor says. “It represents the cutting-edge of what can be done on the road, using today’s technology.” But despite its sophisticated functions, the MC&CV is designed to be user-friendly and robust. “The idea was to make it foolproof,” Lt. Richardson quips. “Seriously, we want as many people as possible to be able to work in this vehicle as required. The easier and more familiar the user interfaces are, the more people we can call on during an emergency.”

RESULTS
Since being delivered in 2008, Irvine’s MC&CV has already been deployed at many incidents, from fire scenes to hostage situations. “The police have also used it as a command and control center outside busy shopping malls during the holiday season,” says Jeff Kaylor. “It is proving to be a truly multipurpose, multi-mission platform.”

“Having all of these capabilities in a mobile platform is a real plus for us,” Lt. Richardson says. “Not only can we provide multi-layered communications response and planning, but we have the ability to backup our dispatch center as required. This provides a layer of redundancy that is absolutely critical to keeping our communities safe.”

James Careless is a freelance writer who specializes in communications-related stories. His writing credits include TV Technology, TV Broadcast, and Radio World magazines.