
Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard - jgrahamc
https://placesjournal.org/article/mission-control-a-history-of-the-urban-dashboard/
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Animats
There's a distinction between operational control rooms, where there are
people with controls connected to real things, and situation rooms, where the
outputs are mostly talk. Combining the two sometimes results in an ego trip
rather than a useful work environment. An extreme case is the Moscow area
electric power control room.[1] It looks like a set from a Bond movie. That
was actually built, although the conference room that descends from the
ceiling was omitted. The setup makes little sense; the main job of a citywide
power distribution control room is coordinating the field workers who are out
there fixing things.

For comparison, here's the electric power control room for the entire
northeastern US.[2] This has two main jobs - controlling the transmission
network, and monitoring and controlling the power market. You can look at most
of the same data they are seeing.[3] (It's a slow-loading Flash page. Once you
get it loaded, select "Big Picture" to get an overview. To understand it, read
"PJM 101"[4])

For a clear distinction between operational and situation rooms, here's NYC's
emergency call center, which answers 911.[5] It's a big call center room of
cubicles. Each station has three screens and a phone system, but the few big
screens around are just showing overall statistics. NYC also has their
COMPSTAT room.[6] It's just a conference room with a big screen. There are no
controls at the seats.

The first real control centers were railroad signal towers. There's a whole
history of those, and it's worth understanding how they managed safety. Early
ones had big levers, and early on, those were interlocked. The Bluebell
Railway, a heritage railway in England, is big enough to need a full signal
system, and it's all antique equipment. Watch this video.[7] About 5 minutes
in, you can see someone operating the huge levers to set signals and switches
in a signal tower. At 5:18, they pull a big lever, and it moves about an inch
and won't move further. They've tried to throw a track switch, and the
mechanical interlocking won't let them throw that switch until the track is
clear and the related signals have been set to stop. When you design "Internet
of things" systems, try to do as well as that 1880s technology.

Military and NASA control rooms usually have a feature rarely seen elsewhere -
anyone can view, read-only, anyone else's screen. In the original NASA and
NORAD control centers, which used the same Philco hardware, all the screens
were analog TVs, and they had a channel selector, so you could view any
console's main feed. This is done so that when important stuff is happening on
one screen, others can look at it without crowding around the person
controlling that screen. Once you have that feature, the need for multiple big
screens decreases. A military tactical operations center today is often one
modest size big screen and a bunch of laptops.

[1] [http://www.archdaily.com/29186/moesk-control-center-arch-
gro...](http://www.archdaily.com/29186/moesk-control-center-arch-group-
abtb/9_variant-3d/) [2] [http://www.elliottlewis.com/casestudy-
pjm.html](http://www.elliottlewis.com/casestudy-pjm.html) [3]
[https://edata.pjm.com/eData/index.html](https://edata.pjm.com/eData/index.html)
[4] [http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-
pjm-101.aspx](http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx) [5]
[http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/images/pr/pr_2012_01_05_psac_91...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/images/pr/pr_2012_01_05_psac_911_call_takers.jpg)
[6] [http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/09/23/nypd-dedicates-
compst...](http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/09/23/nypd-dedicates-compstat-
room-to-creator-jack-maple/) [7]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijWNtrvcEVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijWNtrvcEVA)

~~~
digi_owl
Just a layman, but the thing about train track controls made me think about
parallel computing and the semaphore concept.

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rahulnair23
Fascinating and insightful article. I would still consider some cases where
information is useful.

(a) There are some really interesting community-based initiatives where urban
dashboards add value albeit still data-driven. Instead of using Baltimore's
CityStats I would consider the Neighborhood Vital Signs indicators [1] as a
good example of quality of life indicators.

(b) The dashboard performs a huge role, when considering that information in
city governments exist in silos. There was a time when one transport
department didn't know what another was doing. It still happens (e.g. Fire
agencies not knowing that the metro power was turn off for a good 40 minutes
[2]).

[1][http://bniajfi.org](http://bniajfi.org) [2]
[http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/pub...](http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/publication/attachments/HSEMAInitialReportonWMATAIncident.pdf)

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digi_owl
All of the numbers, none of the information.

~~~
rwc
All of the information, none of the knowledge or wisdom.

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have
lost in information?" T.S. Eliot

