Inside Look: Long Island Railroad’s Hiperwall Command Center Unveiled

IntraLogic Solutions outfits area’s largest railway with video wall and 4D GIS mapping solution.

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Lee Mandel and the IntraLogic Solutions team have a relationship with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that goes back about four or five years, when they helped the Long Island Railroad install a video surveillance and sensor technology system.

More recently, IntraLogic took on a much larger project, helping them install a state-of-the-art system that included cameras, fire alarms, burglar alarms, and a centralized video wall command center, highlighted by Hiperwall software, that was used to integrate the various systems together.

The Long Island Railroad video wall-based transportation command center has been used to both improve customers’ transit experience and manage the assets at 84 stations on a single screen. The video wall command center also provides tremendous flexibility during storms and other weather-related events, emergency situations and infrastructure issues with real-time information.

“Their big thing was simplicity,” says Mandel. “They wanted to have the ability to expand the system with no limitations and that’s what this allows them to do.” It took IntraLogic about a year to create and install the 4D mapping software component of the project and another two months or so to put in the hardware, he says. LIRR officials provided almost all of the hardware themselves, says Mandel.

Before they chose Hiperwall software, though, Mandel and the IntraLogic team took LIRR officials to see a demo of its capabilities.

As part of the relationship with the Long Island Railroad, IntraLogic teamed up with some Long Island companies to develop a four-dimensional mapping technology to allow the railroad to view and manage all their assets on a single screen. With Hiperwall software, IntraLogic was able to integrate all the GIS mapping technology from hundreds of sites into a centralized video wall command center on the existing network.

“They wanted the ability to size or re-size the video feeds on the video wall system to examine specific data,” says Mandel.

Long Island Railroad fell in love with Hiperwall immediately and are looking to incorporate the software into future projects, says Mandel.

“It’s going to open up all kinds of new opportunities for us,” he says.

Challenges and Obstacles

The biggest bump in the road came in building the 4D GIS mapping system, says Mandel, and determining all of the needs and wants of the various agencies that would utilize it. IntraLogic’s team had to “play mediator” and “try to please everyone,” he says.

“You can never estimate how much time it’ll take to prepare for a project of this magnitude,” says Mandel. Because the command center was in use while IntraLogic was doing its work, they had two systems running side-by-side.

“It was an active room,” says Mandel. “We were working at a time when the room might need to be utilized for storms and that sort of thing.”

In addition to talking to MTA officials about expanding the project in other ways, IntraLogic has earned other small projects related to the LIRR installation “and we anticipate many more,” says Mandel.

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