Up until 2006, the CCTV system for the busy London Borough of Tower Hamlets had been part of the control room operations at the neighboring borough of Newham.  But when Tower Hamlets decided to put all CCTV surveillance activities under its own control, the city brought a very ambitious project to the table for a control room that will serve its purpose well for years to come.  For the control room visualization part, Barco delivered six 67″, SXGA+ video wall cubes, which are integrated into a three by two set-up, along with six Hydra controllers.  Handling well over 200 cameras, the Tower Hamlets control room represents one of the most advanced, forward-looking CCTV operations in the U.K.  Together with partners Comfort Zone, Synectics, Thinking Space and EMC2, Barco took part in the creation of a system that would give Tower Hamlets maximum capability and efficiency for the longest possible time.  Management and engineering personnel of Tower Hamlets chose to get the best technology available, and at the same time, to keep their daily running cost -- the amount of staff hours required to fulfill a demanding role -- to a minimum.

“Barco’s video wall technology needs to make the operators’ jobs as comfortable -- and efficient -- as possible,” says Mark Gelfs, Tower Hamlets’ CCTV engineer.  “In previous designs, spot monitors were placed close to the operators.  This actually mixes up two functions -- operators are using their close up vision when they really should be looking into the middle distance,” he adds.  So the Tower Hamlets operation does not have spot monitors on the desks. 

The video wall screen is placed a few feet away and is configured so that a large display area, which acts as the spot monitor, is surrounded by smaller images from the other cameras.  This way, operators are much better able to take in what is happening on the other cameras using their peripheral vision.