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The picture shows a control center desk at the control center in Linz
The picture shows a control center desk at the control center in Linz © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association

Client
Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association,
Linz Municipal Authority

Place of performance
Linz and Wels, Austria

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Control Center Network for the fire departments of Upper Austria

The Upper Austrian State Warning Center, the Linz Professional Fire Department, and the Wels Volunteer Fire Department have joined forces to establish a control center network. The goal of this collaboration is to ensure greater reliability, standardized technology, and more efficient emergency call handling. STRABAG Infrastructure & Safety Solutions implemented the complex integration of communication channels, delivering a new high-performance platform to support this initiative.

Three partners - Three locations - Three control centers: One technology

In the federal state of Upper Austria, fire and disaster protection is provided by 880 volunteer fire departments, 32 company fire departments, and the professional fire department of the city of Linz. In total, around 70,000 firefighters are on call 24/7, serving a population of approximately 1.5 million people.

The Provincial Warning Center (Landeswarnzentrale, LWZ) acts as an emergency call and alarm center for fire departments and water rescue services, as well as a warning and coordination hub for the official disaster response services of the province. The professional fire department of Linz, the provincial capital, is responsible for fire and disaster protection within the city. In cooperation with the fire department of the city of Wels, a joint technical platform for communication management has been established.

This platform is designed to meet the specific operational and technical needs of all three sites in a decentralized manner, while also ensuring functional redundancy, call overflow management, backup capabilities under heavy load, and cross-location process coordination.

The virtualized core components of the NGS3600 communication management system are distributed across the entire system, enabling complex redundancy and failover mechanisms. Each control center is additionally equipped with custom integrations, such as fire alarm systems, building management systems, public address systems and intercom technology. All relevant emergency call lines, trunk lines, and special-purpose lines are processed by the NGS3600 system in a geo-redundant manner, ensuring high availability and system reliability.

The communication workstations are based on the CDI3603 dispatcher interface, which can be operated via touchscreen or mouse. They offer a wide range of intercom and monitoring functions to support efficient and secure emergency communication operations.

Details of the implemented overall system

  • NGS3600 VoIP voice communication system installed at three locations with a redundant system structure in a virtual environment and a duplicated network, firewalls, active network components, VPN and NMS server in each case
  • TETRA control center gateway for the public authority radio network
  • 27 workstations for control and emergency operation with touch panel operation and CDI3603 dispatcher interfaces in the control centers
  • Coupling with the computer aided dispatch (CAD) system
  • Connection of ISDN BRI/PRI lines / SIP trunk incl. emergency call location
  • Connection of the analog radio circuits (31) for local operation or remote operation via radio relay
  • 3 voice recording systems with long and short-term recording incl. interrogators for the NGS3600 clients
  • Integrated fault and network management and integration of external fault messages
  • Integration of building technology and intercom control
  • Ergonomic control center desks
  • The image shows a control center dispatcher's workstation © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association
    The image shows a control center dispatcher's workstation © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association
  • The picture shows a dispatcher, screens, and systems on a control center desk. © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association
    The picture shows a dispatcher, screens, and systems on a control center desk. © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association
  • The picture shows a control center dispatcher at work © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association
    The picture shows a control center dispatcher at work © Upper Austria Fire Brigade Association