In southeastern Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, the Town of Matthews is a suburb of Charlotte known for its small-town feel, family-friendly entertainment, and renowned parks and recreation amenities. Every year, it hosts several annual festivals and special events. Traditionally, Matthews coordinated its emergency management and response from a space in the town’s municipal fire department. Its emergency operations are activated in response to extreme weather, large traffic issues and major events which can bring in upwards of a couple hundred thousand people to the small community. In April 2019, an EF-1 tornado hit the town, causing widespread destruction. That incident, combined with other significant weather events, helped prompt the idea to establish a formal operational space to better oversee the town’s emergency coordination functions, according to Major Roy Sisk of the Matthews Police Department.
Opened in 2024 and located in the Police Department, the town’s new Emergency Coordination Center (ECC) is a control facility for sharing information and managing response activities throughout the Matthews area. “It allows Public Works, Fire & EMS, and the Police Department to convene in one location and better communicate with Mecklenburg County’s Emergency Operational Center,” Sisk said.
The central feature of the new ECC is a nearly 12-foot-wide, 7-foot-high (6×6) Planar TVF Series LED video wall with a 0.9mm pixel pitch. Installed by AV integrator Inter Technologies Corporation, the LED video wall delivers a fine-pitch solution for monitoring real-time information and guiding operational decisions.
“The video wall gives them seven input sources and the ability to display four of them at any time,” said Randy Scott, Southeast regional director of sales and business development at Inter Technologies Corporation. “That was a big selling point.” Viewing distances were likewise very important, according to Dale Miller, director of design at Inter Technologies Corporation. “The 0.9mm pixel pitch is a major upgrade over what they had before,” Miller said.
Content sources displayed on the video wall include laptop and PC feeds, trailer-mounted and permanently mounted video camera streams, as well as visual data from dispatch and emergency management software. The ECC team can also easily switch among different screen layouts.
“The Planar video wall provides everyone in the ECC with a common frame of reference about the incidents taking place,” said Rob Kinniburgh, Matthews Fire & EMS Chief of Department. “When a large event occurs, we can coordinate our activities more seamlessly.”
For its inaugural kick-off, the Town of Matthews activated the new ECC and Planar TVF Series LED video wall to support a multi-agency law enforcement raid of an illegal gambling network throughout North Carolina, with arrest teams executing search warrants at multiple locations. “Having all the data visible in one location makes us more efficient,” Major Sisk said. “The information on the display is incredibly vivid, and the clarity is amazing.”
