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.