BACKGROUND
Emergency operations centers (EOCs) are involved in command and control, policy making, coordination, and overall direction of responding forces in an emergency situation. Airports have begun to utilize EOCs to help manage planned and unplanned events and have benefited from managing all-hazards incidents and planned events in a strategic manner from the EOC.
Early incarnations of airport EOCs typically only included police and fire. However, as the benefits of an EOC have been realized in emergency management and shared with others, airports have begun adding other stakeholders. As those additional stakeholders are added, the design requirements of the EOC change.
As airports begin to think about adding a new dimension to their emergency response management, they begin, typically, by utilizing or cross-utilizing existing space for their EOCs to allow them to have some functionality. There are FEMA documents and FAA advisory circulars that provide a broad overview of the requirements, functionality, and general design of an airport EOC to help guide those airports. As the airports begin the planning process by thinking through how they will use their EOCs, they may go through a concept of operations (ConOps) to help them identify the EOC requirements.
However, there is little guidance to assist airports in understanding what factors should be considered for design of an EOC as they work through the planning process.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this research was to identify the detailed considerations necessary to help an airport design an effective airport EOC.
