Centers For Disease Control Receives AV Booster in Battle Against Diseases and Threats

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the preeminent federal agency in the US for protecting the health and safety of people in the US and abroad. It provides credible data and information to combat and contain deadly diseases and viruses, while promoting health around the world.

Founded in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center, the CDC has worked assiduously throughout the years to alert and suppress outbreaks of malaria, polio, smallpox, and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). More recently, the CDC has been besieged with the peril of anthrax, as well as contagious diseases like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and monkeypox.

The demands placed on the CDC have surpassed all expectations. However, its makeshift base of operations — a hodgepodge of phones, pagers, computers, and random pieces of AV equipment in a converted auditorium — wasn't properly set up to handle the workload and overflow in a timely and efficient manner. The need for a large, modern, permanent facility was apparent, but obtaining federal funds through the proper channels would take time, which the CDC simply didn't have.

In April 2002, Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, stepped up to the plate and pledged $3.9 million to begin production of a new CDC facility. With additional funding and donations of time and equipment from various corporate and philanthropic entities, construction of the CDC's new Marcus Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Atlanta, GA, began in the fall of 2002 and was completed in April 2003.

"CDC's new state-of-the-art facility enables us to employ an integrated response to any public health emergency and better protect the American public," Tommy G. Thompson, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, said during the dedication of the EOC. "The emergency operations center allows us to more efficiently track and respond to disease outbreaks." The EOC is a 7,000 square foot, 24/7 mission-critical building designed to monitor the spread of diseases and possible bio-terrorism threats worldwide. At its core is a professional AV system with two video walls, several plasma displays, a sophisticated touch panel control system, and a variety of Extron products to tie it all together.

"After 9/11, there became a need to have a centralized location for all of the groups in the CDC to conduct operations," said Ron Willis, Operations Manager for Sytex Inc., Advanced Presentation Systems Division, a Virginia-based system integrator that led the design and installation of all the AV equipment. "The system we put in has allowed the CDC to accomplish far more than they ever imagined."

Main Operations Floor

Much of the CDC's work takes place on the main operations floor of the EOC. Here, the center's staff of scientists, doctors, and researchers gather and organize data from all over the world. According to Willis, images of real-time events, statuses, alerts, news, and maps are transmitted via cable, satellite, and computer feeds and displayed onto eight 50-inch DLP projection cubes with their own multimedia wall controllers. The projection cubes are set up in 2x2 arrays, creating two video walls that enable the CDC staff, sitting before theater-style workstations, to easily access, decipher, and prioritize all incoming information.

To route the signals on the main operations floor and throughout the facility, the Sytex team chose the Extron Matrix 6400 Series. Designed for large scale routing applications that require up to 64 inputs and 64 outputs, the Matrix 6400 provides customizable and modular switching of composite video, S-video, component video, RGsB, RGBS, RGBHV, and one or two channel audio.

The EOC control room houses the entire infrastructure for the main floor. There are 12 racks in the control room including two filled with multiple Matrix 6400 Basic Module Enclosures (BMEs) to accommodate all incoming feeds and outgoing signals. "We have a Matrix 6400 wideband and a Matrix 6400 video," Willis said.

Both switchers were originally configured for 48x32, but Sytex is in the process of upgrading them to 64x64. This flexibility to accommodate growing systems is one of the main reasons the Matrix 6400 series was chosen. "Eventually, we will need to expand to different rooms, and the 6400 offers the capability to do that easily," Willis said.

Another key element to the Matrix 6400 is the "rooming" feature. The switcher can be programmed to group multiple outputs to specific "rooms," allowing them to have their own presets. Each matrix can support up to 10 rooms and can consist of up to 16 signals. Because there are a total of 100 room presets available, the switcher is future-ready.

The CDC's two 6400 switchers are equipped with optional FPC 1000 Front Panel Controllers, intuitive interfaces with large LCD windows that allow direct access and control over all presets and switching. Third-party, networked touch panel screens are installed for monitoring and controlling the entire AV system.

Team Rooms

There are six team rooms in the EOC that operate independently from the rest of the facility. All of the team rooms include six desktop computers, each with its own Extron RGB 190FV universal, analog computer-video interface. The RGB 190FV features horizontal shift control, simultaneous output of composite and separate H&V sync, sync on green output and serration pulse removal, and Digital Display Sync Processing (DDSP), which allows sync to be output in its original state and ensures compatibility with LCD, DLP, and plasma digital display devices.

The team rooms also feature a 42-inch plasma display with external speakers and a rack populated with a CATV tuner, a VCR, and an Extron CrossPoint 128HVA , a 12x8 analog RGBHV wideband matrix switcher. CrossPoint HVA models switch RGBHV signals and two-channel audio (balanced and unbalanced). Housed in a rack-mountable, 19-inch wide enclosure, the CrossPoint 128HVA is the perfect single box solution for the team rooms. Each input and output is individually isolated and buffered, and any input(s) can be switched to any one or all outputs with virtually no crosstalk or signal noise between channels.

All of the sources in the team rooms can be displayed locally, while an additional output is connected to the Matrix 6400 switchers for presentations that need to be funneled onto the main floor and/or to other rooms. The team rooms, like the Main Operations Floor, utilize a third-party touch panel screen to monitor and control the AV system.

Videoconference Rooms

The EOC is rounded out by two large, executive-style videoconference (VC) rooms. These rooms are essential to the CDC's objective of coordinating and maintaining communications with outside officials regarding health and safety issues. When the Columbia Space shuttle catastrophe occurred in early 2003, temporary VC communications were set up with local and state public health agencies to discuss hazards from falling debris. More recently, with the VC rooms fully operational, communications were established with health organizations in Geneva and Hong Kong to discuss the SARS epidemic.

Both VC rooms are equipped to the nines with AV components. At the display end, each VC room features a 61-inch plasma and an interactive whiteboard. There are also a variety of sources. "We have several RGB inputs and several video inputs," Willis said. To handle the broad spectrum of sources (VCRs, DVD players, document cameras, and computers) and signal types, there are two racks in the control room dedicated to the VC rooms. Each rack is populated with two matrix switchers: an Extron MAV 1616 AV (now replaced by the MAV Plus 1616 AV ) and an Extron CrossPoint 1616HVA .

The MAV 1616 AV is a composite video and stereo audio matrix switcher designed for applications that require routing of composite video with stereo audio (balanced/unbalanced) signals. With 16 inputs and 16 outputs, the MAV 1616 includes a preset feature that allows up to 16 I/O configurations to be stored in memory for future use. It also provides audio follow so any audio signal can be selected with any video signal simultaneously, as well as audio breakaway, which allows signals to break away from corresponding video signals and be routed separately.

The CrossPoint 1616HVA is an analog RGBHV matrix switcher for switching RGBHV signals and two-channel audio (balanced and unbalanced). Offering 200 MHz (-3dB) of RGB video bandwidth, fully loaded, the CrossPoint 1616HVA includes adjustable input audio gain and attenuation so users can set levels without any noticeable volume differences between sources.

In the VC rooms, the MAV 1616 AV is used to handle all standard definition composite signals, while the CrossPoint 1616HVA routes the high resolution RGBHV signals.

In addition, the VC rooms are hooked up with a number of RGB 190FV interfaces, as well as several Extron RGB 464xi universal, analog computer-video interfaces that can be mounted in a three-gang wall box. The RGB 464xi includes a 15-150 kHz horizontal frequency range, 300 MHz (-3dB) of bandwidth, and Extron's Advanced Digital Sync Processing (ADSP™), which provides all-digital processing of sync signals, avoiding the tearing and other image distortions encountered when using poor sync processing methods with digital display devices (DLP, LCD, D-ILA™/LCoS, plasma, etc.). Willis mentioned that the RGB 464xi also has "a nice clean appearance that meets our requirements."

To top it off, an Extron USP 405 Universal Signal Processor (now replaced by the USP 507 ) is included in each VC room to supplement any video signal conversion requirements. As an all-in-one box solution, the USP 405 is able to perform as a high performance scaler, scan converter, trans-converter, format converter, switcher, and transcoder. It accepts a wide range of video signal formats, processes them, and outputs them all in one format directly to a digital display, projector, or editing device. There's virtually no limit to what the USP 405 can accomplish within an environment like the CDC.

To maximize the quality of the output image, the USP 405 features several Extron proprietary video processing technologies: Dynamic Motion Interpolation (DMI™), 3:2 (NTSC) and 2:2 (PAL) pulldown detection, and the patented Accu-RATE Frame Lock (AFL™). DMI technology is an advanced motion detection and compensation method used to deliver the best aspects of still and motion algorithms, resulting in a superior image; 3:2 and 2:2 pulldown detection is an advanced film mode that helps maximize image detail and sharpness for NTSC or PAL sources that originated from film; and AFL solves frame rate conversion issues such as glitches by locking the output frame rate to the input frame rate.

Mission Critical

Because the CDC's goals are of a highly critical, fast-response nature, it was crucial that all equipment be dependable and simple to use. "This is a 24/7 facility," Willis confirmed. "It's a known fact that Extron manufactures the type of equipment effective in this type of environment."

Willis also said the reaction to the AV system has been nothing short of spectacular. To put it all in perspective, Charles Stokes, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation, stated: "The technologies available to the scientists working in the operations center are truly cutting edge."

In short, the variety of Extron products in the CDC not only aid in keeping the AV system technically up to speed and easy to use, they also play a key role in ensuring the world's health issues are monitored and attended to as expediently as possible.

For more information on the Web:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — http://www.cdc.gov
CDC Foundation — http://www.cdcfoundation.org
Sytex Inc. — http://www.sytexinc.com