I remember there was a water treatment plant or something similar that got hacked. The hackers started messing with the levels of the chemical mixtures to poison an entire city. The only reason it didn't end in catastrophe is because there was somebody watching that specific screen at the exact moment it happened. Seeing this made that scenario more terrifying.
So, in the bottom picture, the staff can only passively look at the far away screens?
"No touchy the keyboard!"
Good catch, wonder why they're so far away.
I've worked on SCADA systems. The most the keyboard was used for was logging in then then putting something heavy on it stop the computer going to sleep. System was entirely controlled by the mouse and head office didn't consider that 1 person might be monitoring 4-6 computers on their own for an 8 hour shift and enforced a 5 minute idle lockout on all of them.
To avoid accidentally fucking something up by bumping a key? Maybe they only pull them forward when they have to change something.
It's probably also highly automated and the staff's job is just to watch for irregularities and alert the necessary teams.
I mean, I'm all for giving jobs to humans and all, but isn't monitoring a bunch of numbers and sending an alert when they go wrong one of the few things computers are actually objectively better at than humans are?
Edit: Holy crap people. I understand that they're probably not there for that purpose. That was the entire point I was trying to make. You don't ALL need to point out the obvious to me.