The Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations Center, part of the Greater New Orleans metropolitan region and serving a population of more than 440,000 persons, manages a crucial role in its Louisiana region. In the case of an emergency, it is the hub that connects and provides all key stakeholders—including executive staff, the parish president, councilmembers, firefighters, police and EMTs—crucial situational awareness that enables this team to keep the community safe.

The center receives many feeds of information, including AV content, from multiple services including the National Weather Service, Department of Transportation and from its own facilities. It is critical to be able to bring all that data and media, as well as numerous internet inputs, together in order to strategize the moves that need to be made to successfully handle various situations at hand.

“The use of video in an emergency situation and an activation is extremely important,” said Cody Coulter, Jefferson Parish emergency management coordinator. “It became clear to us that we needed to refurbish the emergency operations center with a new, more robust AV system.”

The center’s original system was very limited in its capability. There were not enough monitors to provide a full view of situations on a moment-to-moment basis. In addition, the team could not push the optimal amount of information needed to get ahead, and stay on top, of situations. In addition, there were multiple rooms within the facility, including a unified command room and the Parish president's conference room, which were not integrated and unable to share AV content.

To help with the renovation, Coulter and his team called on the New Orleans-based Crescent Multimedia Solutions to do a walkthrough for a design-build project. Up against a tight budget and timeline, it was soon found that the manufacturer of the signal distribution products that were used in the original system couldn’t fulfill the needs of the new system technology-wise, nor could they deliver the gear on time. That’s when Crescent called on ZeeVee.

“Hurricane season was getting really close, so we had to make this project a priority to get it done on time for our client,” said Corey Ancar, president and CEO, Crescent Multimedia Solutions. “We reached out to ZeeVee through our PSN&I Global Alliance relationship, and they said they could get us the high performance ZyPer4K SDVoE encoders and decoders we needed to get the job done on schedule.”

For the Jefferson Parish EOC, Crescent Multimedia Solutions utilized ZeeVee’s ethernet and fiber optic network systems to integrate up to 19 individual multiview images on a single monitor. The new system also enables all areas of the center to work functionally together, as well as provide a lot more information, whether that's through a media outlet or the internet. Integrating the ZyPer4K, powered by SDVoE technology, alleviated the need for a dedicated signal processor normally required for canvasing and multiviews for bespoke LED resolutions. This enabled them to reduce their footprint and AV architecture, their energy footprint, and most importantly, the speed in which they were able to integrate a fully automated system. SDVoE technology, featured in the ZyPer4K, eliminates traditional device restrictions by providing a solution with a zero-latency compression engine that results in reduced power consumption and smaller form-factor products.

“Working with Crescent Multimedia Solutions has been absolutely fantastic,” said John Costa, Central U.S. sales manager, ZeeVee. “They took full advantage of our signal partner portal to receive technical enablement and design assistance in creating a solution. From that point, we collaborated with them seamlessly throughout the design process to optimize the architecture to meet their specific requirements.”

Coulter is excited about the benefits the new system offers today and down the road.

“One of the big pieces that we were really looking for in this new system was not only to be able to upgrade what we already have, but also to have the knowledge and confidence that, over the next five to 10 years, we will be able to make necessary upgrades efficiently and cost-effectively,” concludes Coulter.

Learn more about ZyPer4K at Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations Center.