Issue #224 | Feb. 11, 2010 | by Andy Kowl

In our former office, the temperature took wild swings, regardless of what the thermostat said. One minute, you'd need a coat, the next a bathing suit. It was distracting and horrible and killed productivity.

At the El Paso County 911 District, the 9-1-1 call-takers process more than 45,000 emergency calls each month, providing a vital communications link to emergency response agencies for both the city and county, and even federal Office of Emergency Management employees.

The emergency and administrative workers there had the same temperature problem we did. The difference is when things were not going well for them, 700,000 Texas citizens could be adversely affected.

El Paso had made a big investment in technology. In addition to ensuring that call center personnel were comfortable, they needed to be sure that the District’s UPS (uninterruptable power supply) system, located in another closed area of the call center, was kept at the ideal temperature.

Even small changes of temperature in one area can affect people and equipment in other areas.

Ray Perez, assistant director of the 911 District, oversees the 55,000-plus square foot building facility, which has a unique configuration. The building's strange duct system and other heating and cooling mechanics made the task of calibrating the environment for everyone's comfort quite complicated.

Two Liebert refrigerated cooling units run 24/7 cooling the UPS system. For Perez, making the rounds in the call center was the only way to ensure the Lieberts were operating properly, because the reports he received from wall units were not in real time. This created a manual process which ate into other duties that require his attention.

Entire system in jeopardy
When Ray Perez received a call there was an air conditioning failure in an area that jeopardized the whole system, something had to be done to make sure this could never happen again. Had it not been for someone walking into that room by chance, a major catastrophe could have ensued.

Not only does this room house the UPS unit, but also $5 million worth of equipment such as radios and other critical electronics equipment. Temperatures were approaching 90 degrees.

While the problem was complex, the solution was simple. Perez was referred to check into RF Code’s environmental monitoring solution. RF Code, the Austin, Tex.-based manufacturer, has a solution consisting of wire-free, active RFID-based temperature and humidity sensors as well as Sensor Manager software that lets users monitor in real time the environmental that surround equipment and personnel.

Sensible sensing for critical environments
"The environmental part of our business has really taken off," according to RF Code. Traditionally environmental sensors must be wired to a system. The wire-free sensors can be installed quickly and easily, using 433 MHz active RFID to transmit the temperature data.

What worked especially well for El Paso, not to mention their other customers, is the ease of installation. It causes no disruption for the operations in progress; and additional add-ons can be done the same way later.

"In a real world environment, our sensors have a range up to 100 feet," said Mike Primm, RF Code chief engineer. He pointed out field tests can show far greater ranges, "but put one inside a big metal cabinet with its door closed, and you may be down to 50 feet."

They take these issues into consideration designing their solutions, which have not only been adapted by another 9-1-1 center, but have in particular become popular with data centers for which these ranges are perfectly fine. The El Paso set-up only required about a dozen sensors initially.

The equipment in those high heat environments requires constant cooling, failure of which could be catastrophic. A real-time monitoring system is better insurance than any liability policy.

Beside temperature and temp-humidity calibrated, digital sensors, RF Code offers other types, including a fluid-detection sensor which "is a thin film sensor you can wrap around a pipe," according the Primm. "A half-meter length is common with these sensors, but ours you can run out 50 meters if you need to." This long sensor is about the thickness of duct tape and is sensitive enough to detect your wet finger.

Cooler heads prevail for emergency response
According to El Paso's Perez, the real-time monitoring solution has increased his productivity tremendously. The software was able be loaded to the 911 District’s email server and also its Blackberry server. Any deviation to the pre-set temperatures will send out an email to his computer and his Blackberry.

While the cost was right, he insists that sometimes, “Things aren’t about money, but about how much productivity is gained and how a product adds to the effective use of one’s time. “

According to Perez, not only has his productivity improved, but in another way, call center staffers can focus on their jobs and not the temperature as a distraction. Why? “Because I can now deal with an emerging issue before it escalates into a temperature or cooling problem that affects call center personnel.