control room

A control room is a room serving as an operations centre where a facility or service can be monitored and controlled. Examples include:

• in television production, the master control room is an operations center for a network or station, or the production control room of a television studio;
• each recording studio typically has its own control room where the recording is actually made;
• a NASA flight controller works in a "Flight Control Room" in a Mission Control Center; affiliated facilities such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have their own control rooms;
• Nuclear power plants and other power-generating stations have control rooms, sometimes also serving as an area of refuge;
• Various military facilities, ranging in scale from a missile silo to NORAD, have control rooms.
• Call centers use a control room to monitor incoming and outgoing communications of customer service representatives and provide general oversight of the call center.
• Fire service control rooms (UK) see: FiReControl for article about nine new regional control rooms to handle emergency calls in England.

Special Hazards and mitigation

A control room can, at times, be designated as an Area of refuge, particularly in high risk facilities, such as a nuclear power station or a petrochemical facility, as an accidental fire can have severe repercussions to the surrounding environment. As is typical for all areas of refuge, occupants must be provided with guaranteed life support and guarantee of functionality of the items they are intended to control for the anticipated design-basis fire event.

It is not unusual to provide control rooms with gaseous fire suppression systems to safeguard its contents and occupants.

The primary equipment in control rooms is housed in multi-function cabinets. Since the control equipment is intended to control other items in the surrounding facility, it follows that these (often fire-resistance rated) service rooms require many penetrations. Due to routine equipment updates, penetrants, such as cables are subject to frequent changes. It follows that an operating control room maintenance program must include vigilant firestop maintenance for code compliance and for gaseous fire suppression systems to work as well. Gaseous suppressants must occupy the space that is to be protected for a minimum period of time to be sure a fire can be 100% extinguished. Openings in such spaces must, therefore, be kept to a minimum to prevent the escape of the suppression gas.

Due to the nature of the sensitive equipment inside control room cabinets, it is useful to ensure the use of "T-rated" firestops, that are massive and thick enough to absorb penetrant heat in an effort to reduce heat transmission to the inside of the control room. It is also not uncommon to place control rooms under positive air pressure to prevent smoke from entering.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Control room

The TV production control room for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.	ESPN's digital master control room.	Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, Fossil fuel power plant.	Control room cabinets, opened up, revealing lacking firestops
The control room of a nuclear reactor at N.C. State.	The control room where unmanned spacecraft are monitored at JPL.	The control room for the D0 experiment.	A German incinerator control room.
The SAGE Sector Control Room formerly used by NORAD.	A control room for a Titan II missile silo.

See also

• Fire protection
• Bromotrifluoromethane
• Firestop
• Fireproofing
• Circuit integrity
• Passive fire protection
• Active fire protection

External links

• Treatise on Halon and its replacements
• NIST treatise on halon replacement

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