The Municipal Administration of Rotterdam looks back on a successful upgrade to ComBus 5

This was an important moment for Rotterdam. All of the underlying infrastructure in the operational monitoring station and the backup monitoring station were renewed.

"An important job", says Harrie Schoonewille, the commercial director at Entropia Digital B.V. "A 100% tested and operationally ready environment was decisive. Furthermore, the employees of the Municipal Administration of Rotterdam had to be trained, so that they could work with the new monitoring station environment from day one. During all of the preparations and the final physical migration, an optimal continuation of daily work was of prime importance for the Municipal Administration of Rotterdam, and that the safety of the employees would not be endangered at any moment."

A "pilot team" was already trained 2 weeks in advance, for working with the ComBus 5 monitoring station. A complete switchover followed a week later: The old monitoring station had to be migrated to ComBus 5 monitoring station software in a single day. All of the walkie-talkies of the other teams were reprogrammed at the same moment. This approach had already proven efficient with the municipality of Utrecht, where the monitoring station software of Entropia is used for communications with special investigating officers (BOA's), and where the ComBus 5 version had already been launched in 2014.

A step ahead for Rotterdam

"This new version of ComBus 5 is a big step forward for us," says Peter Cieremans, the manager of Toezicht Stadsbeheer Rotterdam, the supervising authority of the municipality of Rotterdam. "It was a really big job, both for our colleagues from the monitoring station and the employees of our suppliers, as well as for the service desk employees, at the district offices of the Municipal Administration, and the mobile investigating officers. I hear from all employees that they are very satisfied with the new features. All the more so, because they really have a feeling that Entropia has taken comments from the past into account, and that these have now been included as improvements in the ComBus 5 software. Furthermore, we are extremely happy with the new backup monitoring station. This ensures that we can communicate with our employees on the road at all times. In the final analysis, we are primarily searching for security, which also is the reason why the backup monitoring station has been given a redundant setup."

"The services of Entropia are a basic precondition for us, for keeping the city of Rotterdam clean, intact, safe and accessible. We must have the confidence that our employees are reachable at all times. If the system fails, then we have no other option than pulling back our employees from the street. Also for employees in the field, good communications are essential. Only in this way can they carry out their work properly, whereby both they, the employees of, for instance, the City Shops and the citizens who come to benefit from our services there can feel safe."

Backup monitoring station

In case of calamities, the Municipal Administration of Rotterdam can opt to go to the backup location. The backup monitoring station was relocated to a new site, where infrastructure identical to the main monitoring station was installed. The databases are systematically synchronized, so that the staff of the centre can, in urgent situations, immediately continue to work at the backup location. Furthermore, this backup location offers the possibility of being used as a training centre in the future.

ComBus 5

The ComBus 5 monitoring station software makes use of state-of-the-art technologies, with which it guarantees a robust basis for further development and support in the upcoming years. The ComBus 5 software is characterized by its modular design and a superb release policy. Extra functionality includes, for instance, the group affiliation function, whereby employees who are transferred to a different team can automatically be traced in the new group by the central operator. And the dynamic grouping function gives the central operator the possibility of creating temporary groups, and of assigning employees from other teams to this temporary group. Proprietary maps were integrated in the ComBus 5 software version. With this map-in-map module, the need to visualize employees in real time on the terrain is fulfilled. This is how one can provide both safety and deploy personnel at the right location.