The new Central de Emergencias 112 de Cantabria, inaugurated on March 3rd 2009, is part of a larger effort undertaken by the government to improve emergency services for the citizens of this autonomous region in Northern Spain.

Just like their counterparts at 911 centers throughout North America, the emergency center in Cantabria is a 24/7/365 operation that handles all types of emergency calls and coordinates both public and private agencies that need to respond, including: the fire service, health, civil defence, police (regional and national), public works, and others.

In addition to incorporating new technology, updates to the new center include an increase in staff from 13 to 30 operators as well as a crisis management area for local government that provides the same real-time access to information as if working from the control room, helping to facilitate and accelerate decision making.

No ‘Burn-in' Effect

A 3 x 2 display wall has been installed for visualization in the control room, consisting of 6 Eye-LCD 4600M displays chosen for their sharp image quality, high contrast, high brightness and high resolution. In contrast to plasma displays, which are also available in frameless versions, there is not the permanent danger of ‚burn-in‘ effects with TFTs. These effects occur on plasma devices already after the short display of a static image and cause irreparable damage to the screen over time, but this does not happen to TFT screens so easily. The 6 displays have a screen diagonal of 46" with 16:9 aspect ratio, and native WXGA resolution (1,366 x 768 pixels). They are driven by an Eyevis Netpix controller type 3008 and Eyecon software to provide a versatile platform for the presentation of cartography and text to all operators.