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Who protects the watchers?

A number of years ago, I attended a conference talk by a control room design specialist in the UK, John Wood. He provided a number of examples of control room positioning in some chemical plants where major explosions had taken place. One of the things he emphasised was that the thinking at that stage was that chemical plant control rooms should be situated in the centre of the plant, with the thought that the control centre would be close to the action.

Unfortunately, as his pictures of blown up plants showed, the control room was indeed close to the action and usually one of the first affected places where there was major explosions that devastated the plant and destroyed the central coordination function in the process. Given the nature of modern communication facilities, we now have the potential to position the control room almost in another country, never mind at the side of the plant unlikely to be directly affected. Clearly, thinking ahead of worst case scenarios that may impact on control rooms ahead would have been useful in this context. We often think that this worst case scenario is not likely to occur and design accordingly.

A few years ago, I provided some CCTV surveillance training to a couple of the London Boroughs. During a visit to one of the control rooms I was surprised to see that the centre had formidable perimeter defensive protection. It seemed unusual for a UK operation where the emphasis is often on a low-key approach and fitting in with the community. A couple of years later in 2011, the London riots broke out and this control room was in one of the areas most badly affected by the rioting. Suddenly the perimeter protection made a lot of sense and the worst-case scenario planned for some years ago made sense. As Rob Anderson mentioned to me recently in a discussion, you don’t design for now, you design for the future. This would include further expansion of control room facilities but also for future potential threats.

There have been a number of incidents in places like Johannesburg of control rooms of office buildings being compromised by criminals and then offices being ransacked. In some cases, the control room doors were opened by personnel who had no idea of whom was out there. Use of cameras to view entrances and surrounding areas is obviously an increasingly critical issue as part of safeguarding control rooms.

There have also been a number of publicly discussed incidents in anything from petrol stations, restaurants and government departments where criminals have broken in and stolen the CCTV equipment from site to prevent evidence being preserved on their actions. While we think that control rooms are often removed from immediate threat, there is an increasing trend of direct threats to control rooms, as there is to truck escorts and even security patrols or standby response units in a range of industries. This is being undertaken as a tactical measure by criminal syndicate gangs to either prevent an effective response, or to create the opportunity to steal almost at will on site. It is a clear escalation in the crime area that all security control rooms will have to make provision for.

There are a few provisions that can assist in the process:

1. Control rooms are often centralised functions where everything goes to the control room. In the present day, having only centralised resources versus distributed functions becomes questionable. Having backup viewing of other locations provides insurance that if a site is compromised, this can be identified. Centralisation means that these types of functions have to be extremely well protected. Backup and verification support across at least one other control room starts creating a safety net. Further, having provision for remote access to operational controls and online backup off site is also useful.

2. Some scenario planning around possible threats to the control room, how they might occur, and what kind of facilities are important are all important issues. During the design of the city control rooms in a major city in South Africa, it was clear that we needed to make provision for potential gunmen or snipers in surrounding buildings. Your risk analysis is therefore important.

3. Aligned with the risk analysis, there should be protective systems in place including the strategic positioning of cameras and access control mechanisms at various perimeters around the control room, not just the immediate access door.

4. Remotely activated protection devices such as smoke or pepper gas in the event of a control room being occupied may be considered although this may impact on your own personnel as well. Being able to take over control room functions remotely should the need arise is also a consideration if your control room is literally hijacked.

5. Organisations will need to draw up policies and procedures for hostage situations and operators need to be trained along with rehearsals of these kinds of situations.

A thorough risk analysis should outline potential threats in line with possible future scenarios and we need to design and protect our control rooms and their personnel accordingly. Protection strategies should also be mindful of not precipitating shootings on staff and safeguarding staff from direct and indirect threats. Protection is going to become even more important as the arms race with, and tactics of criminals, get increasingly sophisticated. For those potentially exposed to terrorist threats which can now include everyday sites such as shopping centres, the emphasis is even more important.

Dr Craig Donald is a human factors specialist in security and CCTV. He is a director of Leaderware which provides instruments for the selection of CCTV operators, X-ray screeners and other security personnel in major operations around the world. He also runs CCTV Surveillance Skills and Body Language,

and Advanced Surveillance Body Language courses for CCTV operators, supervisors and managers internationally, and consults on CCTV management. He can be contacted on +27 (0)11 787 7811 or [email protected]

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