Skip to main content

Bristol brings together support services to form major emergency control centre

A new multi-purpose centre has opened in Bristol to house the council’s Emergency Control Centre, Traffic Control Centre and Community Safety (CCTV) Control Rooms into a single facility for major emergencies. These teams provide public safety services that use 700 CCTV cameras around the city with a large part of the centre dedicated to managing the city’s traffic network and monitoring the flow of traffic around Bristol.
October 20, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
A new multi-purpose centre has opened in Bristol to house the council’s Emergency Control Centre, Traffic Control Centre and Community Safety (CCTV) Control Rooms into a single facility for major emergencies. These teams provide public safety services that use 700 CCTV cameras around the city with a large part of the centre dedicated to managing the city’s traffic network and monitoring its flow of traffic.

Staff from transport providers are now able to work with the council’s traffic management team to provide greater reliability in public transport services and more accurate real-time information about services.  

The centre monitors 200 junctions, manages almost 40 traffic and information signs, handles 46,500 welfare and telecare calls every month and has been built on a communication platform that links into the city’s high-speed fibre network.

Open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year; the centre provides traffic monitoring, set up and review of traffic signals, emergency response to telecare and assistive technology users, alarm and security monitoring, lone worker support and CCTV management.

Marvin Rees, mayor of Bristol, said: “This new centre represents an investment in the safety of citizens and getting the city moving. The challenges we face to beat congestion, support vulnerable people in their homes and secure safer streets require new approaches and new ways of working. By blending state of the art technology and a collaborative approach to sharing operations we’re taking a positive step towards meeting these challenges.”

Related Content

  • Gothenburg to implement congestion charging
    February 2, 2012
    Gothenburg, which is line to become Sweden's second major city to implement congestion charging, will not enjoy the pre-deployment trials and referendum which Stockholm did. But, says the STA's Eva Söderberg, this is less of an issue than might be imagined
  • EU to support the deployment of common ITS
    January 29, 2015
    Twelve European road operators and authorities have teamed up with the European Commission in the EasyWay initiative to foster European harmonisation and interoperability of ITS through a range of projects on common standards and procedures. The EU’s Ten-T programme will contribute almost US$2.3 million to the initiative, which follows up the on-going European ITS Platform and will continue its activities towards ITS harmonisation across the continent. The EIP+ project will monitor the EasyWay deplo
  • São Paulo unifies traffic data and services
    September 9, 2014
    The Agência de Transporte do Estado de São Paulo (ARTESP), which oversees public transportation for the State of São Paulo, Brazil, has opened its Information Control Centre, designed to help ensure the quality of service provided by local operators of the state's highways. The centre will unify traffic data, incident management and service delivery through the use of advanced analytics to help ensure safer and more efficient travel for a population of 20 million across 271 cities. The new system, built
  • Ricardo and Roke Manor to collaborate on next-generation vehicle cyber security
    September 7, 2017
    International technology company Ricardo is to join forces with cyber security specialist Roke Manor Research to develop solutions that will make autonomous and connected transport robust against cyber attack. Many of today’s new vehicles are already connected over the air for telematics and maintenance, for safety systems such as eCall, by consumers using insurance-based monitoring technology, and by the many smartphone apps available to vehicle owners.