Client
Office of the Vorarlberg Provincial Government
Place of performance
Bregenz, Austria
Rescue and Fire Department Control Center of the State of Vorarlberg
The State of Vorarlberg operates two emergency call centers, which coordinate all civil emergency and disaster response services across the region. The project involves equipping a shared technical infrastructure for the Rescue and Fire Department Control Center and the State Warning Center as a distributed, highly available, and fully redundant system.
Two control centers combined in one system
The system consists of three main components: the computer aided dispatch system (CAD), which includes an integrated geographic information system (GIS) as well as a situation awareness and disaster management system; the interface functions implemented as gateways, which provide open interfaces to various applications; and the NGS3600 VoIP voice switching system, featuring geographically distributed instances and local radio systems deployed across the state, all connected via VoIP.
A particular challenge of this project was the implementation of two fully equivalent switching systems at two separate locations, which are permanently interconnected and operate in parallel – without relying on traditional backup systems. All 16 main operator workstations across the two control centers are simultaneously registered with both switching systems and handle communications from both sites in an integrated manner.
Using IP multicast technology, the status of individual calls within the entire system is broadcast in real time. For the user, it is completely transparent whether a call is being handled from Bregenz or Feldkirch. The two sites are connected via a high-performance IP WAN link and have powerful connections to the fixed-line telephone networks. The nationwide emergency numbers 144 (ambulance) and 122 (fire department) are routed to the two central access points, ensuring very high availability. The switching system also supports integration with the state’s dedicated trunked radio network, with radio communications processed as standards-compliant VoIP calls.
The technical infrastructure, including servers, switches, and routers, was largely provided by the client, while the components and applications from SISS were integrated into this existing infrastructure.
All components are monitored via a network management system (Nagios), with fault notifications forwarded directly to the network management system (NMS) of the State of Vorarlberg.
