Monday
20Apr2009
Ready for a "Distributed" EOC?
Monday, April 20, 2009 at 08:56PM This is a quick post just to introduce a topic that I’ve thought about only a little: How to we support a distributed emergency operations center? That is, an EOC that isn’t a single place where everyone gets together and decisions are (or aren’t) made?
One context where this is mentioned is the response to a public health emergency where people don’t want to be close enough to other people to catch something, but still need to organize a response.
I have so many other projects—right away projects—that I am not going to spend too much time on this at the moment. But, the more I work with public health (and we have a statewide PanFlu exercise in June) the more I’ll have to work on this.
Thoughts and comments welcomed.
David Coursey, N5FDL | Comments Off tagged distributed eoc, panflu, public health in Emergency Management, Planning
distributed eoc, panflu, public health in Emergency Management, Planning 
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Reader Comments (2)
David,
Here in Alabama we have many of our EOCs tied together with an internet management software package. It uses the ICS organizational structure and each EOC has hardened and redundant internet connections. Depending on the scale and location the EOCs can operate as a single entity, with multiple locations reporting and interacting via their web portals. There several software companies that provide a wide variety of service and products. Locally the product is Win-EOC.
The second phase that I am pursuing is a public interface that would allow selective information from the EOC's PIO to be made available to the web.
Another component is the exchange of information between the various volunteer groups and their need for information related to call outs and reporting back to EOC from the field. This can be accomplished by Net Control Stations having a chat or radio interface with the Logistics station at EOC.
That is one concept of a distributed EOC, and a good one, too. WebEOC software, which seems to have pluses and minuses, is used for much the same thing. Microsoft has offered Groove for much the same purpose.
What I was thinking about is situation were we don't want people sitting in the same room because of the possibility of spreading illness, such as a deadly flu.