Topic 9: Emergency operations centres

Overview

In Topics 7 and 8 you dealt with response organisations and the control of them in a disaster/emergency event. In this topic you will examine the principles of operations centre management. You will identify and describe your local emergency operations centres, how they are activated and the way in which they are operated.

You will then be able to use this information to examine and describe the activation and operation of Emergency Operations Centres in the disaster/emergency event you have chosen to study for this subject.

All through the topic you will be given guidelines on your major report (Assignment 2) work related to this topic. Activities in the topic are designed to provide a base of information against which your assignment work can be constructed.

Learning outcomes

After completing the work for this Topic you should be able to:

• describe what an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) is;
• explain the need for an EOC;
• describe the factors affecting location of an EOC;
• explain the functions of an EOC;
• describe the elements of an EOC;
• explain the relationship between functional elements of an EOC; and
• discuss the effectiveness of EOC operations within the impact phase of your selected emergency/disaster event.