Barco control room report (5/5): The future of control rooms

Welcome to the final installment of our control room blog series! After exploring operational efficiency, workflow optimization, and collaboration practices, we're capping our journey with a look at what lies ahead for control rooms, based on insights from our comprehensive survey of over 2,000 control room professionals.

Control rooms are undergoing a fundamental shift. Once primarily focused on monitoring and raising alarms, they're evolving into strategic operational hubs that direct and support broader organizational functions. This expanded role now extends beyond traditional safety and security to encompass building management, production monitoring, ICT, emergency services, and even operator well-being.

With this evolution comes both opportunity and challenge. As control rooms become complex information centers, professionals must navigate critical issues like workflow complexity, reactive decision-making, and information overload.

What will the next generation of control room operators need to succeed? According to our respondents, critical thinking and problem-solving top the list (21%), closely followed by technical proficiency in supervising advanced technology and software platforms (20%). These skills reflect the increasingly strategic nature of control room operations.

Artificial intelligence stands poised to revolutionize control room operations. Our research shows 68% of professionals are willing to embrace AI in their daily activities, while 58% believe overall safety will improve with AI technology.

The impact of AI appears most promising in several key areas:

• Data monitoring: Enhancing situational awareness through continuous analysis of large datasets
• Risk management: Anticipating security threats, operational failures, and system vulnerabilities
• Process optimization: Identifying inefficiencies and enhancing response times
• Anomaly detection: Identifying irregularities and enabling prompt intervention
• Documentation & reporting: Improving accuracy and reducing administrative burdens

Interestingly, C-level executives and IT managers place greater emphasis on forward-looking benefits like predictive insights (38%), incident response (37%), and information analysis (36%) compared to operators and supervisors.

Based on 30+ years of industry expertise, we envision control rooms evolving through four key trends:

1. From viewing everything to exception-based viewing: Reducing cognitive overload by focusing on critical incidents
2. From response-driven to proactive decision-making: Anticipating events through better data access and strategic foresight
3. From operational execution to strategic supervision: Operators becoming supervisors of increasingly autonomous operations
4. From control room to insights hub: Transforming into intelligence units by aggregating and analyzing data from multiple sources

As we conclude this series, one thing is clear: the control room of tomorrow will be less about reacting to events and more about predicting and preventing them before they occur. Is your organization ready for this transformation?