It remotely displays the data over a standard network connection, and provides comprehensive alarm processing and remote alerting. AreaConnect 500 delivers life-critical information in seconds and enables real-time decision making for emergency response, trend analysis for long-term studies, corporate level safety monitoring of remote facilities and incident scaling.
For example, many departments and agencies may respond to the site of a HazMat spill, environmental accident or possible terrorist event, and the experts required to make command decisions are often nowhere near the incident site.
As each department deploys their own sensing networks, an integrated real-time data view is critical, as is the ability to continue to add on additional networks as they arrive on site. Data interoperability is just as critical as voice or radio interoperability.
Each AreaConnect 500 can control, aggregate and monitor data from up to four video streams and 17 sensor streams, giving remote experts the power to instantly view integrated, aggregated data such as real-time plume models, video streams, and chemical and radiological readings to make well-informed, life-critical decisions.
The AreaConnect 500 represents a new approach to hazardous environment monitoring, bridging wireless data streams to wired networks, enabling more points of monitoring over a larger area than ever before possible.
The AreaConnect 500 also powerfully leverages existing fixed monitoring networks in public facilities and industrial plants and can integrate data from ad hoc wireless networks deployed for environmental remediation or fenceline monitoring.
For example, the AreaConnect 500 can integrate facility and fenceline monitoring for a large number of manufacturing plants and aggregate those results in real-time for personnel at worldwide corporate headquarters.
As a result, there is better community awareness and protection, better visibility into the state of facilities, and faster response in the event of an emergency. For example, the AreaConnect 500 can control power switching and small devices such as door locks and light switches.
"One of the critical lessons learned in the aftermath of 9/11 was that lack of interoperability of inter-agency voice communications hindered effective response," said Robert I. Chen, CEO of RAE Systems.
"At the TOPOFF II terrorism drills last year, we learned that in addition to voice, the aggregation, interoperability and analysis of data were among the most crucial elements in effectively responding to a hazardous situation," said Robert I. Chen, CEO of RAE Systems.
Continued Chen, "For the first time, the launch of the AreaConnect 500 enables any number of response teams or monitoring sites the flexibility to access, rewind, replay and interpret multiple data streams."
"We often talk of 'more data, faster data, better data' as our goal in driving better decision making, and the AreaConnect 500 takes a major jump in providing all three."
The AreaConnect 500 is currently available and is in use at a number of corporate and industrial locations. The AreaConnect 500 is compatible with AreaRAE, AreaRAE Gamma, AreaRAE GPS, AreaRAE IAQ, RAEWatch, RAELink, ProRAE Remote, WiFi (802.11 A/G), 802.3 Ethernet, GPRS and SMS networks.