Acquisition and Maintenance of Emergency Response Resources
To support the emergency response
organization, emergency managers must acquire and maintain the resources needed
for effective operations. This includes the construction and equipping of EOCs
and the acquisition and maintenance of equipment.
Emergency
Operations Centers
EOCs are
facilities that provide technical assistance to emergency responders at the
scene of an incident. EOCs, which are permanently located in areas expected to
be safe from hazard exposures, provide support for the performance of emergency
response functions at the incident scene. An EOC is important because the
resources needed to respond to an incident are often widely dispersed, so the
specific resources needed to respond to a particular type of incident at a
given location cannot be predicted with certainty in advance. Moreover, many
organizations participate in the incident response and each organization must
have a capability for obtaining and processing timely information about the
incident. This capability is established by collocation of essential personnel
with telecommunications and information processing equipment in an EOC that
will provide an effective division of labor while maintaining coordination of
action. Lessons learned in previous incidents suggest that considerable
decisionmaking authority should be allocated to organizations close to the
incident site because of their superior knowledge of local conditions. However,
greater technical knowledge and resources generally are available at higher
levels. Thus, close coordination is needed among organizations at all levels.
A jurisdiction’s
EOC should be sited at a location that provides ready access by those who are
essential to a timely and effective emergency response. This includes both
those who have technical knowledge as well as those with policymaking
responsibilities. In the case of a transportation incident, an IC establishes a
Command Post at the incident scene and maintains regular communication with the
local EOC (if necessary). In addition, the Incident Command Post directs the
emergency response by coordinating the activities of field teams from the shipper
or carrier with local government response teams such as fire fighters who are
attempting to terminate the emergency and minimize population exposures.
An EOC must be
designed with enough space to house to support the emergency response functions
that take place within it. Moreover, it must provide a layout that places its
staff in close proximity to the equipment, information, and materials they
need. Previous guidance and practice (Federal Emergency Management Agency,
1984; Lindell, et al., 1982; US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1981) indicates
EOC designers must perform the following tasks:
1.
Establish
the EOC design team.
2.
Analyze
the organization of the EOC.
3.
Assess
the flows of resources associated with each position.
4.
Determine
the workstation requirements for each position.
5.
Assess
the environmental conditions needed to support each position.
6.
Determine
the space needs for each position.
7.
Develop
a conceptual design for the EOC.
8.
Document
the design basis for the EOC.
During Task 1, a design team should be established that contains
expertise from emergency preparedness, information technology, ergonomics, and
architecture. The design team should interview representatives of all
functional teams that will work within the EOC to obtain the information needed
to develop the design basis. During Step 2, the design team should examine the
EOP and its accompanying procedures to determine what are the functional teams
into which the EOC is organized, the positions to be staffed within each team,
and how the positions are related to one another. In addition, the design team
should assess the flows of resources associated with each position—especially
the flows of information. Static information such as EOPs, plant layouts,
evacuation route locations, and air infiltration rates for local residential
structures can be gathered ahead of time and stored for easy retrieval. Dynamic
information about the status of hazard conditions (e.g., flood forecasts,
hazmat facility conditions) must be collected from the appropriate sources,
routed to those who need it, and processed quickly and accurately to support
critical decisions. Both static and dynamic information can be conveyed in
three different formats—verbal (words), numeric (numbers), or graphic (pictures
or figures). The inherent difficulty in transmitting some types of information
(especially graphic information) can combine with the volume of information
transmitted (especially large tables of numbers) to severely strain the
capacity of EOC staff to perform their functions unless advanced
telecommunication technologies such as electronic mail and computer based
information displays are used to manage the flow.
The flow of materials generally is not very significant unless paper is
the medium by which information is conveyed. Similarly, equipment flows
generally are minimal in dedicated EOCs although they can be significant if the
EOC is located in a space that normally is used for another purpose (e.g., a
conference room). However, flows of personnel are very intense during the EOC’s
initial activation and shift changes. Moreover, some positions require a
considerable amount of movement. For example, many emergency organizations have
analysis teams whose leaders link their teams with an Executive Team or
Emergency Director (e.g., mayor or city manager), so the team leaders need to
move back and forth between groups. Because of this frequent movement, EOCs
must be designed to ensure the team leaders remain informed about events that
take place in one group when they are with the other group, yet do not disrupt
others as they move back and forth.
During Step 3, the Design Team should identify the workstation
requirements for each position, especially for vertical storage space,
horizontal workspace, and the number of personnel using them concurrently. It
is advisable to provide seating and, in some cases, work surfaces, whose height
can be adjusted readily to accommodate differences in workers’ body dimensions.
Similarly, keyboard heights and computer viewing angles also should be
adjustable.
During Step 4, the Design Team should assess the environmental
conditions needed to support each position. All positions within the EOC are
likely to have similar needs for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning,
but there can be significant differences in the need for lighting and noise
suppression. Variation in lighting needs can be accommodated by providing
locally controllable task lighting, and noise suppression can be achieved with
acoustically absorbent material. During Step 5, the design team should
determine the space needs for each position. The space needed for each position
will be determined largely by the amount of horizontal workspace and also by
the requirement for circulation space (the area needed for people to move about
freely in the work area). Variation in the staffing needs for different types
of incidents generally requires a design that provides flexibility in space
allocation from one activation to another. In most cases, this flexibility can
be provided by open space designs with moveable partitions between team areas.
During Step 6, the design team’s architect can use the information flow
to construct an adjacency matrix, which describes the degree to which each of
the EOC teams needs to be located in close proximity to each of the other
teams. The adjacency matrix, together with the information from the space
analysis, can be used to develop an idealized layout. In most case, this
idealized layout must be adapted to the physical constraints of an existing building
in which the EOC will be constructed. During Step 7, the Design Team should
prepare a design basis document that summarizes the results of their analyses
and the resulting design. This document should be reviewed by those responsible
for the EOC’s operations and by a committee representing each team that will
staff the EOC. This review will provide an opportunity for users to verify the
accuracy of the design basis and to provide a benchmark against which
subsequent proposals for EOC renovations can be assessed.
Equipment Acquisition and Maintenance
Each agency should identify the equipment it needs to
perform its assigned tasks, paying special attention to tasks that are only
performed during emergencies. Special purpose equipment that is not used routinely
will require personnel to be trained and periodically tested in its proper use.
In addition, such equipment might need periodic preventive maintenance, battery
checks, and recalibration. An emergency manager should maintain a computer
database of emergency-relevant equipment that is owned by the jurisdiction. To
provide a capability for rapid search during an emergency, this database should
contain fields listing the euipment’s name, model and manufacturer, names and
contact numbers for personnel authorizing release of the equipment, names, and
contact numbers for qualified operators, contact numbers for repairs, and
critical dates such as preventive maintenance, battery check, and
recalibration.
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