A video wall installed at Sheffield City Council’s Urban Traffic Control Center has helped fight congestion in the UK city by overseeing 200 major city-wide events and 1,100 road incidents in its first 12 months of operation.
Deployed by video display and audio visual system manufacturer and supplier Eyevis UK, the video wall has monitored millions of journeys in the last year, including people travelling to and from events, and aided the daily management of transport in a metropolitan area with over 1.5 million inhabitants. During the first year of operation at its new location, the control center has:
• Overseen the day-to-day management of the city’s transport network;
• Helped manage 1,000 incidents, such as road traffic collisions and breakdowns;
• Had an operational input at around 100 planned roadworks, including road closures, lane restrictions, and diversions;
• Monitored transport and public safety for approximately 50 soccer matches at Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United soccer clubs, attended by over one million spectators;
• Controlled around 90 events at the Sheffield Arena, totaling over 720,000 visitors;
• Facilitated the smooth running of around 200 large city-wide events, such as the Yorkshire Half Marathon, Sheffield 10k Run, Tramlines, Sky Ride, City Center Grand Prix Cycling, After Dark, Mosborough Music Festival, and numerous demonstrations, marches and cultural festivals.
For the council’s video wall, Eyevis installed eight of its 55in (140cm) extremely narrow bezel EYE-LCD-5500-XSN-LD-FX displays in the 24/7 control center last year, when it relocated to Sheffield Town Hall from Carbrook, where it had operated since 2008. The displays are seamless LCD monitors that offer full HD resolution with 1920 × 1080 pixels, direct-LED backlight technology, and a mechanical bezel width of only 0.14in (3.5mm) between two displays.
The company also installed a Netpix 4900 video wall controller configured for multiple analogu video feeds, IP video feeds, graphic PC data, and web browser feeds. The Netpix unit is a network-based graphic controller for the management of video wall systems, single displays or projectors, that creates a big, joined desktop for network-applications, video and graphic sources.
Technical furniture provider Thinking Space Systems, which had installed the original control room in 2008, won the tender to move the existing consoles to the new location and undertake a complete fit out of an empty office in the town hall to bring it up to current control room standards. The city council had specified the Eyevis display wall, which was installed in partnership with Thinking Space within tight timescales.
