The words of the crisis room,
explained simply.

The COD (departmental operations centre) is the prefect's crisis room, activated when a major event affects the département. It brings together State services, emergency services, local authorities and the operators concerned, so that everyone shares the same information and decisions are coordinated. It is usually set up in the prefecture.

A COD brings together services whose computer networks must not be connected to each other. We bring their pictures together on the wall by HDMI cable, never their networks.

The CODIS (departmental fire and rescue operations centre) is the centre that coordinates the operational activity of a SDIS across the whole département. It follows incidents in progress, commits reinforcements and informs the authorities.

On a CODIS wall, we display the alert system, mapping, cameras, drone feeds and positions reported from the field. A prepared scenario, “forest fire” or “flood”, is recalled in one click when the situation changes.

The CTA (alert handling centre) is the room where fire service operators receive emergency calls, notably on 18 and 112, assess them and dispatch the rescue teams. It runs day and night.

This is the configuration we deploy most often: one server, eight inputs, one 86-inch panel, one control screen and one touchscreen.

CTA-CODIS refers to a room where alert handling and the operational coordination of a SDIS are combined in one place. The operators who take the calls and those who follow the incidents then work in front of the same video wall.

Several SDIS have renovated their room while keeping the screens in place: only the end-of-life proprietary controller is replaced by a standard PC and our software.

The SDIS (departmental fire and rescue service) is the public body that organises the firefighters of a département. It handles prevention, firefighting and emergency assistance to people, and runs the CTA, the CODIS and the mobile command resources.

28 SDIS are equipped with our software, roughly a quarter of the country. The video wall remote control was born from a request from firefighters.

The SAMU (emergency medical service) answers calls to 15 and organises the medical response to emergencies. Dispatch is the stage where a dispatching doctor assesses each call and chooses the right response, from simple advice to sending a medical team.

The dispatch wall brings together maps, resources and video feeds, and stays on if the Internet goes down. Dispatch software is displayed like any other source.

The prefecture is the seat of the State's representative in the département, the prefect. In a major crisis, the prefect directs operations and activates the departmental operations centre, usually set up on its premises.

For the Pope's visit to Lourdes in 2026, we designed, built and ran the two video walls of the prefecture's control room: 18 computers displayed, a dozen entities in front of the same picture.

A command post is the place, fixed or mobile, from which a manager directs an operation and coordinates the resources committed. It can be set up in a building, a vehicle or a field structure, as close as possible to the incident.

The same software equips the fixed room, the van and the case: operators find the same gestures again the day they deploy on an incident.

A mobile PC is a vehicle or transportable module fitted out as a command post, with screens, communication means and workstations. It is deployed as close as possible to a long-running incident or a major event.

In a mobile PC, we centralise the HDMI sockets in the vehicle and drive four screens, including an outdoor screen facing the field. SDIS 76 runs a mobile command unit equipped with our software.

The COS (rescue operations commander) is the fire service officer who commands, in the field, all the rescue resources committed to an operation. They act under the authority of the operations director, the mayor or the prefect depending on the scale of the event.

The COS needs the room to see what they see. Cameras, positions and photos from responders come up from the field through QuickShare, and the video wall can in turn be shared to the field on a code-protected link.

A crisis cell is the small group of decision-makers and experts brought together to manage an exceptional situation, in an administration as in a company. It centralises information, makes decisions and follows them up until things return to normal.

The room manager announces a decision, each operator displays it within seconds: large icons, touch, no training. An emergency message can also be shown as a banner on all the walls, in one gesture.

A crisis room is the dedicated place where a crisis cell meets, with workstations, communication means and a shared display. The video wall gives everyone the same view of the situation.

Between the sources and the walls, everything goes through HDMI and capture cards. Our software runs locally: an Internet outage does not deprive the room of its display.

An overflow room is an annex room opened when activity exceeds the capacity of the main room, for example during a surge of calls in a storm. Extra operators work there with the same tools.

We equip overflow rooms like CODIS and CTA: same software, same gestures, no training needed for reinforcements.

The RETEX (lessons learned review) is the analysis carried out after an event or an exercise to understand what worked, what was missing, and decide on improvement actions. It relies on a reliable timeline of facts and decisions.

Drag & Drop records the film of the wall: a snapshot at every change of display and a timestamped log. Pulse turns the log into structured RETEX sheets, and CollectivView exports captures and a PDF report.

The event log (“main courante”) is the chronological register in which a room records, as things happen, the events, the information received and the decisions taken. It serves as a reference during the crisis and as a basis for the lessons learned review.

Pulse keeps the room's event log: each event declared in a few seconds, handled by status, then closed with its RETEX. Everything runs locally, no data leaves the room.

NexSIS is an operational management system used by fire and rescue services, like SYSTEL or ARTEMIS. It is one of the alert systems displayed on the wall of a CODIS.

NexSIS appears on the wall like any other source: HDMI mirroring of the operator workstation, network stream or remote desktop. No gateway to have developed, no access to request from its vendor, no open access to the alert system.

HDMI capture means taking the picture of a screen from its HDMI cable to display it elsewhere, without touching the workstation or its network. The cable carries only the picture: it gives no access to the files or the system of the workstation.

This is the basis of our operational rooms: workstations from networks that must not talk to each other sit on the same wall, connected by a simple video cable. Adding a source means plugging in a cable and giving it a zone.

A capture card, or acquisition card, is a component installed in a computer that receives video signals, for example over HDMI, to display or record them. Each input takes one source.

We use our capture card, 4 HDMI 4K inputs, chosen and proven by us. One or two cards in the display server are enough for most rooms, and off-the-shelf cards are still recognised.

An HDMI over network cable extender is a transmitter and receiver pair that carries an HDMI signal over a CAT5e or CAT6 network cable, to place a screen far from the computer. The cable is only the physical medium: the signal stays HDMI and does not travel on the computer network.

We use it up to 40 metres to link the display server to the screens and the command workstations. The signal crosses no switch and is visible to no machine on the network.

An HDMI switch is a box that receives several HDMI sources and sends them to a screen, one in full size or several at once. Combined with a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse), it also forwards the keyboard and mouse to the chosen computer.

Our software drives an 8-input switch from a touchscreen, over an RS232 serial link: no network, nothing to hack. Thirteen display modes, sources renamed with the room's vocabulary, scenarios recalled with one finger.

A wireless HDMI kit is a transmitter and one or more receivers that carry an HDMI picture by radio, on a direct link, with no box and no computer network. It helps out where running a cable is impossible.

At Lourdes 2026, an off-the-shelf kit, one transmitter and four receivers for around a hundred euros, carried the picture of the wall to the distant islands. The walls themselves stayed on cable.

RDP is Microsoft's remote desktop protocol: it lets you display and control the session of a Windows computer from another machine on the network.

In Drag & Drop, an RDP session is a source like any other: the remote machine appears in a zone of the wall, and the operator takes control without leaving the room. Credentials are encrypted, never stored in clear text.

VNC is a remote screen sharing system, available on most operating systems: it shows the screen of one machine and lets you control it from another.

Drag & Drop connects to the VNC service already present on the target machine, without installing anything on it. The session appears in a zone of the wall.

RTSP and RTMP are two protocols for live video streaming over a network. RTSP is mainly used to read the stream of an IP camera; RTMP is mainly used to send a live feed to a server, from an encoder or a drone.

Our software displays these streams in a zone of the wall, with an adjustable buffer that absorbs brief network drops without losing the picture.

ONVIF is an open standard that lets IP cameras from different brands make themselves discoverable on the network and provide their stream in a standard way. An ONVIF camera integrates without a driver specific to its manufacturer.

Drag & Drop automatically discovers the ONVIF cameras on the local network, and a camera can also be entered directly as RTSP. Discovery stays within the local network, without going out to the Internet.

An HDMI dummy plug is a small connector that plugs into a video output and makes the computer believe a screen is connected to it. When a screen is off, unplugged or broken, the computer keeps its display configuration instead of rearranging it.

On a video wall, it stops a switched-off screen from upsetting the layout: the zones stay in place. We sent one, at €3, to SDIS 17 to simplify the maintenance of its wall.

An isolated local network is a network limited to one site, with no Internet access and no link with the organisation's other networks. What is on it can only be reached from the inside.

In our operational rooms, the video wall is connected to no computer network: the only link between a business workstation and the wall is a video cable. Control commands stay within the local network, restricted by firewall to authorised machines.

The Local First principle means running software entirely on site, with no cloud and no Internet connection, with data that stays with the user. In crisis management, it guarantees that the tool holds up the day the network goes down.

Once installed under licence, our software opens no connection to our servers and transmits no data. The licence is a signed file, checked on the machine at every start, with no activation server.