SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)

What it is

SCADA stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. It is the layer of industrial software (and the underlying sensor / RTU / PLC fabric) that lets an operator see what equipment is doing in the field and command it from a central room. Found in electrical grids, water utilities, oil & gas, district heating, rail signalling, manufacturing.

What's on the wall

Mimic diagrams of the physical plant (substations, pipelines, valves, breakers), live telemetry from each tag, alarm lists sorted by criticality, trends and sparklines, weather overlays. The mimic is the system of record — every operator decision starts from "what does the diagram show?".

Why it matters

Industrial accidents are correlated strongly with situational awareness gaps. A well-driven SCADA wall, fed into a situation room during incidents, is the difference between a contained fault and a regional outage. See also NOC.

Related terms

• Situation room (situation centre)
• NOC (Network Operations Center)