Control Center Solution is a generic term for different designs of technical arrangement within staffed command & control facilities. Control Centers represent more or less integrated installations with one or more work positions that are used to manage resources in order to achieve results in complex environments.

Control Center follow a Purpose which - very generic - is to control and/or to apply control principles in order to affect a Target in a desired way. The purpose as such is outside the Control Center entity and defines its mission. In most cases with distributed systems, controls may be managed from the centre, whereas effecting the control may be performed by deployed teams. Common to all Control Center Solutions are underlying principles of control.

Control Center

Mostly control centres are operated to control spatially distributed facilities and deployed teams generally classified as with

• disaster management
• public infrastructures,
• industrial sites,
• traffic control and
• military operations.

Examples for the most advanced control centers operate in safety critical environments with complex missions such as:

• Police Dispatch and Control Centers,
• Fire fighter Dispatch and Control Centers,
• Search and Rescue Centers (SAR
  Search and rescue
  Search and rescue is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger.The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, mostly based upon terrain considerations...
  
  )
• Facility control Centres
• Highway Control Centres and Public Transporation Control Centers
• Seaway channel Control Centres and Harbor Control Centers,
• Air Traffic Control Centers (ATCC
  ATCC
  ATCC may refer to:* American Touring Car Championship* American Type Culture Collection* Asociación de Trabajadores Campesinos del Carare* Asian Touring Car Championship* Air Traffic Control Center* Atona Case Competition...
  
  )
• Space Mission Control Centers
• Military Control Centres

Control Centers represent large facilities, impressive buildings with equally impressive infrastructure and potentially hundreds of controllers working.

Dispatched Control Center

Control Centers, especially with military and disaster control and management are not necessarily fixed to a distinct location, although they typically are. In recent years remote missions with dispatched resources become more frequent in particular in Defense (Peacekeeping

Peacekeeping

Peacekeeping is an activity that aims to create the conditions for lasting peace. It is distinguished from both peacebuilding and peacemaking....

 Missions) and Crisis Management

Crisis management

Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. The study of crisis management originated with the large scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980's.Shrivastava, P....

. The "center" becomes a mobile unit.

Virtual Center

Even more progressively, Control Centers may not need a distinct space at all. Based on communications infrastructure with high availability figures controllers/commanders may operate on the spot with mobile devices retrieving all required information from the network (network centrics

Network centrics

Network Centrics is the emerging discipline of applying and enhancing networking and computing concepts and implementation technologies in a variety of social, business, content distribution, and communication domains involving interactions amongst the domain entities...

).

Control Principle

Control is generally based on a control loop that consists of

• Sensors - generate data which represent (part of) the current environment (incl. human beings: e.g. observation reports)
• Actuators - affect the environment (incl. human beings: e.g. firefighter is an actuator)
• Controllers
  Controller (control theory)
  In control theory, a controller is a device which monitors and affects the operational conditions of a given dynamical system. The operational conditions are typically referred to as output variables of the system which can be affected by adjusting certain input variables...
  
   - forms a picture of the current situation, compares it with the intended situation and either decides on the adaptation of the intended situation (changing the plan) or formulates and decides on an action affecting the environment. This decision making process may include human operators, but not necessarily.
• Communication
  Telecommunication
  Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
  
  s - all functional elements of the Control Loop require adequate connectivity amongst each other

These entities together form a feedback loop which allows to detect changes on the affected target as a response to actions aimed for affect the target. The efficiency and effectiveness of this feedback loop depends on the quality of information generated and processed and the processing delays.

Decision Making

Control/Decision Making can be differentiated in

• Current Situation - representation of Target parameters relevant for fulfilling the purpose
• Desired/Intended Situation - representation of Target parameters relevant for fulfilling the purpose
• Decision Support (Deviation Analysis, Suggestions) and Decision Making
  Decision making
  Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
  
  
• Command & Control - elements that provide access to the Actuators (voice communication,..)
• Documentation & Analysis - generates database that feeds back into Decision Support (learning factor)

Sensors produce data

Data

The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...

 which is transformed into information

Information

Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...

 when presented as part of the surveillance picture. The closer the process gets to the decision making phase the more a transformation into knowledge can be observed. Completing the loop the characteristic of the content develops back into information and finally data which is operated by the actuator.

Control Center Solution

A Control Center Solution is a distinct compilation and integration of specialized services and components (equipment) which - each for itself or by mutual interaction - form part of a control loop required to follow the purpose.

Examples

Using a fire fighter mission as an example the whole control loop would operate as follows:
The purpose is to remove the fire. Front line fire fighter observe the scene and act as sensors by reporting back to the mission command. With these reports and other sources of data a picture of the current situation is generated which deviates from the intended situation which may be "no fire". Considering the characteristics of the surveillance information and the quality of the deviation between now and should be mission command may decide to change the plan or order for an attack led by fire fighter. The target is the fire. .