Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Emergency Coordination Center (EOC)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:40:26 -0400

Emergency Operations Center Design

A properly designed Emergency Coordination
Center (EOC) should serve as an effective
and efficient facility for coordinating
emergency response efforts. An EOC may
serve a number of uses including operations,
training, meetings and other uses. The EOC
can optimize communication and coordination
by effective information management and
presentation. The PSI Group of Northrop
Grumman Information Technology has the
depth of experience and qualifications to
perform this for your agency.

EOC Training

The Incident Command System (ICS) provides
a management structure and system for
conducting emergency operations. It is
applicable to small scale daily operational
activities as well as major mobilizations. ICS,
provides EOC and operational staff with a
standardized operational structure and common
terminology. Because of this, ICS provides a
useful and flexible management system that is
particularly adaptable to incidents involving
multi-jurisdictional or multi-disciplinary
responses. ICS provides the flexibility needed
to rapidly activate and establish an
organizational format around the functions that
need to be performed. Northrop Grumman
Information Technology offers annual and
refresher training for ICS operations.
EOC Consulting

An EOC is the physical location where an
organization comes together during an
emergency to coordinate response and
recovery actions and resources. These centers
may alternatively be called command centers,
situation rooms, war rooms, crisis
management centers, or other similar terms.
Regardless of the term, this is where the
coordination of information and resources
takes place. The EOC is not an incident
command post; rather, it is the operations
center where coordination and management
decisions are facilitated.

Event Information Tracking

Managing response and recovery operations
involves a tremendous amount of
information. The EOC's job is to collect this
information and to manage and control event
information and response activities.
Typically, the information flow will look
something like this:
1. Incident occurs
2. Notification sent to staff
3. Status evaluated by EOC managers
4. EOC activated, Incident Log opened
5. SOPs implemented using checklists
6. Tasks assigned according to plan
7. Resource allocation (tracked in log)
8. Task performance (tracked in log)
9. Status briefings and updates to
stakeholders

Information Management
All of this information will need to be
managed and documented. A strong
information management system will be a
must. Emergency Managers need to provide a IT
Emergency Operations Center Design
PSI Emergency Operations Centers

www.northropgrummanIT.com

robust command, control, and monitoring
function that will:
• Above all else - be easy and efficient to use
• Collect failure information to allow
rapid and early contingency response
• Track multiple incidents and resources
• Communicate activities across the
enterprise
• Provide documentation capability
Good information management tools can
help contingency managers create and
organize their plans as well as in
exercising and executing them. While
contingency plans often end up in binders
or files, a good information management
system can make plans and supportive
materials easily available to managers.
Typically, the information flow is managed
via a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)
system, which logs and tracks events,
coordinates information from disparate
systems and acts as the platform for
emergency first-responders (Law
Enforcement, Fire and Emergency Medical
Services) to receive calls from the public and
manage resources in a prioritized manner.

• Operate an Alert Network
• Event Alert Evaluation and Triage
• Incident Logging
• Team Tasking
• Resource Deployment and Monitoring
• Status Boards
• Executive Briefings
• Documentation

The Ideal Information System
The ideal EOC would be an easy to use and
robust information and decision management
system that provides:

• Central command and control
• Inter-agency radio communications
control
• Remote camera control and viewing
• Asset inventory management
• Video teleconference communications
• Geographic display of resources and
incidents
• Early alert communications
• Functionality as a virtual EOC
• Secure data sharing over other networks
• Event tracking and logging
• SOP and contingency plan check-off lists
• Resource management
• Documentation of response actions

Two-way communications…a structured
mechanism for receiving and sending
information. Standard categorizations will be
needed to route reports to the appropriate
position in the Command Center. Emergency
managers should be able to centrally receive
and evaluate this event information from both
inside and outside the enterprise. The system
should help manage this information in realtime
and keep records of events as they unfold.
Automated response and recovery
checklists... for all of their major functions to
ensure that the recovery is complete. The key
is to put an automated checklist in the hands
of the right person anywhere and everywhere
in the organization. Make it easy for them to
send the checklist results as data and make it
easy for managers to see the progress in
executive reports.

Alert notifications… with a sophisticated
message sorting and distribution capability so
managers can track and log multiple and
varied notifications and ensure that the right
information gets to the right individual.

Conclusion
You can be certain that good planning,
training and design will improve emergency
response and speed the recovery process.
Having good plans in place, drilling on them
and using a robust information management
system (CAD) to implement and track their
execution will prove to be invaluable, no
matter what the problem.
EOC

http://www.it.northropgrumman.com/whoweserve/ps_solutions_eoc.html

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