An Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is ...
... a location designed to support emergency response, business continuity and crisis communications activities.
An EOC is most often a physical location (like a conference room) but can also be a virtual location (like an online or telephone meeting.)
In some organizations, the name that refers to an EOC facility may differ. That's okay of course as long as everyone knows what their functions are. Examples are:
- War Room
- Situation Room
- Op Center
Event though the term "EOC" oddly implies that they perform actual emergency operations (they don't), I'll still use the name EOC since it is the most widely recognized and accepted.
During unplanned events like hurricanes, cyber attacks, etc. and planned events like a marathon, large conference, etc. EOC's are a critical link in the crisis response chain by providing essential support and coordination of people, things, and information.
In addition to incident support, Emergency Operations Centers also coordinate with and support the Multi-agency Coordination (MAC) Group, often called the Policy Group, Executive Policy Group, Crisis Leadership Team and many other names.
MAC Groups exist to provide two exclusive functions:
- Provide policy guidance - along with the authority to create or change existing policy
- Support resource prioritization and allocation for incident response - such as financial and personnel support
The main links in that chain are the following three (3) facilities :
Next up, we'll break down these facilities and what role they play.