Inside the MISDOT Operations Center

Clickford, Steven M.

After a millions of pennies spent several years ago to build a new operations center for the state of Minibrick, the project has finally came into fruition today at Noon Eastern, the Minibrick State Department of Transportation will open up their new Statewide Operations Center.

This center was in the works for the last couple of years to address concerns from the Blizzard of 2015, and more synergies between operations between the various public safety and works agencies.

The setup goes as follows, each minifigure sits at their own workstation. MISDOT, MISP, MTA, DOS head. Their role is to monitor the MISDOT cameras and respond whatever comes to them. This room gets really busy during noreasters, blizzards and hurricanes when evacuation routes must be properly coordinated.

Today, the heads of the Minibrick State Police, the Minibrick State Department of Transportation, the Miniland Transit Authority, the Statewide Fire Marshall is now housed into one operations center (similar to one of those op center war rooms).

Housed at a former highway depot for the Minibrick State Department of Public Works and Transportation (dating back many, many years ago), this location in nearby Narnia, in the Capital Region, is a fully redundant facility. With two sources of distributed power, and a building out of reinforced two by four bricks, with some pieces literally shipped from Denmark (Pick a Bricks on the shop.lego.com site actually comes from a Denmark warehouse)

Typically a key card entry, MIS employees were welcomed to visit on February 1st.

The facility can hold up to 6 minifigures at one time, Currently the Emergency Operations Center or the MISEOC is currently being under construction and will be in another wing of the building, to hold up to 30 minifigures and direct relationships with The City and County of Miniland to have better relations with the Metro governments.  This pictured warroom is typically not an EOC. However, this facility can be used to monitor evacuation routes and send out messages since this is a traffic management center.

The datacenter, right behind the 4 LED monitor panel, using a Clicktel Unified Computing Experience (UCE) with some core routing and switching. The data center is far from complete, the video from the traffic cams come from IP based networks on a private fiber that runs along the Minibrick State Thruway and 93, 291, 493. The video input and output system is all IP based, so the hardware is designed to handle up to 60 inputs at a time for the reps to monitor.

Of that, the MISDOT rep can monitor up to 500 cameras statewide on state roads, interstates, railroads, etc. They have telemetry on various roads, located two to five miles apart. With all this surveillance, they can direct minfigure drivers to go on alternative routes, detect any wrecks before a 9-1-1 call is placed, MISP reps can use the same information to direct their own dispatch and people on the radio to get to that very same scene in a quick manner.

This has taken the state many years to complete, this is based on projects I’ve seen in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Houston’s Transtar/TexasDOT, and even mini-sized operations center in some NYS Counties the City of New York, etc. They look like offices converted to war room centers.

This building meets 2017 Minibrick State Building Codes of such requirements

  • Reinforced two by four bricks, and must interlock. Each corner of the building must be interconnected by two by four bricks
  • Building must withstand 50mph winds. (Killer hurricane for the minifigures)
  • Building must withstand seismic activity over magnitude 3.0 (equivalent to 6) to 5.0 (equivalent to 7) of the Richter and a Mercarddii  scale of under VII of destruction
  • Raised flooring of under 22″ which reinforces the workspace from being destroyed
  • An exterior that is a facade and not being the primary exterior part of the building

The project cost about $4,000 in penny value.

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