Emergency Operations Center

The Emergency Operations Center is responsible for the strategic overview, or big picture, of any disaster or incident. The EOC does not control on-scene response efforts but aims to provide the on-scene personnel with the resources and information necessary to respond to any hazard properly. The decisions made through the EOC are designed to be broad in scope and offer general guidance on priorities. The EOC serves as a coordinated link between the chief elected official of each jurisdiction in Fulton County and the field personnel coordinating the execution of event priorities to ensure a collaborative effort.

The common functions of all EOC's are to:

• Collect, gather and analyze data
• Manage requests, procurement and utilization of resources
• Make decisions that protect life and property
• Maintain continuity of the organization
• Act within the scope of applicable laws
• Disseminate those decisions to all concerned agencies and individuals

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 may follow the following series of events:

• Incident occurs
• Notification sent to staff
• Status evaluated by EOC managers
• EOC activated, Incident Log opened
• SOPs implemented using checklists
• Tasks assigned according to plan
• Resource allocation (tracked in log)
• Task performance (tracked in log)
• Status briefings and updates to stakeholders

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 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