Antwerp Fire Service renews their control room

The Antwerp Fire Service has no less than 700 operational, professional firemen. They are responsible for the basic tasks, but every fireman also has a dedicated specialty. The Antwerp Fire Service protects three municipalities: Antwerpen, Wijnegem and Zwijndrecht.

New control room

For more than 10 years, the dispatching control room at Post Noord has been the 24/7 heartbeat of the fire department. The outdated equipment got a complete overhaul, when the Antwerp Fire Service refurbished their control room with hi-tech communication equipment.

This control room now manages the entire fire department zone. Important information is given to the emergency vehicles, as interventions are dispatched via the control room.

To manage the constant flow of information, coming from many different sources, the Antwerp Fire Service chose to implement state-of-the-art technology. This allows them to communicate the real-time information in a structured way to the control room operators.

Barco OpSpace

For the renovation of the control room, the Antwerp Fire Service chose Barco OpSpace , allowing the operators to control everything with a single mouse and keyboard. The application ensures that the control room operators can easily centralize the information flows.

The control room can now also easily send images to the crisis room, so collaboration between these two rooms is a lot easier. In this way, the staff can manage interventions more smoothly and everything can easily be displayed on one screen. Barco OpSpace is also very scalable, which means that they can easily add or remove sources.

An ergonomic investment

The control room is manned 24/7, so it is important to invest in ergonomic solutions. There are always 4 operators on duty, so the area consists of 4 ergonomic desks. Due to the multifunctionality of the CREON Desk it is possible to store the technical equipment at the bottom of the desks. This integrates with the clean desk principle of Antwerp Zone Fire department.

Collaboration with Play AV

Fire Brigade Zone Antwerp chose to engage Play AV for the installation of the new control room because of the quality support and the professional guidance of the consultants.