EOC Design Considerations

Survivability
It is critical that your EOC remains operational during an emergency. If you must relocate your operations to another facility without the same capacity and technology as your EOC, it can put you and your response operation at a severe disadvantage, and fighting to regain control of an event. The New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM) experienced just such a scenario when their EOC was impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and they had to relocate to another site.

The EOC should be located away from high hazard areas and in a survivable building. In our modern culture this may be difficult, since there are hazards – natural or technological – almost everywhere. There should be separation from highways, railroads, pipelines, hazardous material sites, and the like. Your facility should not be in a flood plain, in an area subject to liquefaction in an earthquake, or subject to ocean storm surge from hurricanes.

Location of the facility is driven by many factors including space availability, political decisions, accessibility, and proximity to potential hazards. You may not have a choice of locations. You are assigned a building and space based on its availability. In this case you must take every action possible to harden the facility to survive a disaster. Examine all mitigation measures available to you. If your region is at risk from earthquakes, consider seismic retrofits to the structure. If your building is in a flood zone, store sandbags, and have high capacity water pumps on site to remove water from basements and other critical areas. Consider measures to protect staff from airborne vapor hazards by having systems in place to either filter air intakes, or to shut air handling systems down to allow for sheltering in place.

King County, Washington had their EOC in a liquefaction area. It was only because the facility had a seismic retrofit to the building that it remained functional following the Nisqually Earthquake in 2001. It is an excellent example of $250K in mitigation funding paying big dividends to protect an EOC and allow for disaster response because of what “didn’t” happen.

Redundancy
Redundancy is closely allied with survivability. Your facility survivability is linked to the number of redundant systems that support it. The challenge is that when designing, building and modifying a facility, redundancy is not valued. In this era of tight budgets, you can expect considerable opposition to having multiple systems backing up existing systems. It is not that hard to convince a budget person that a generator is needed for an EOC. Convincing the budget office that you need a second generator to back up the emergency generator can be another issue. Experience tells us that one thing you can count on in a power outage is that generators will fail.

Other redundant systems to consider include heating, cooling, and water supplies. We have become more technology dependent in our need to keep electronic systems cooled and functioning. In 1994, Washington state had an extremely destructive fire season. With outside temperatures over 90 degrees, the air conditioning unit in the EOC failed, causing uncomfortable working conditions for those inside. Worse than human discomfort, communications systems were almost lost, even though a new air conditioning unit was installed within 24 hours. What would happen today with the heavier technology loads?

How much fuel and other supplies do you need on site in order to be self-contained and functional following a disaster? The national level message of three days for individuals and families is not adequate for EOCs. With a catastrophic event that includes transportation challenges it would be appropriate to plan for 7-10 days of fuel and other supplies.

Communications
The EOC exists to gain and maintain situational awareness and to coordinate the use of resources to restore operations and to recover from the impact of a disaster. To do this requires multiple communications systems.

Having communications system redundancy is extremely important. Hard line phones, cellular communications, satellite phones, and multiple radio systems are all necessary to ensure continuous operations and linkage with the rest of the world. Amateur radio groups have provided communications links for decades during disasters and are still used today as backup communications to highly sophisticated radio systems. Every EOC should have amateur radio equipment and operators available to help during times when other methods of communications fail or need augmentation.

Consider having multiple communications paths for your T1 lines and other ground cable based systems. You don’t want one errant backhoe to take out your entire operation. The move to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems are wonderful for generating day to day cost savings. However, it exposes you to another vulnerability of having an internet outage. And, in this era of Private Branch Exchange (PBX) phone systems, it is still a good idea to have a few POTs (Plain Old Telephone) lines that run from your facility straight to the telephone company’s main switch.

Even the President of the United States will turn on the television to find out what is happening. A functioning television can help you obtain and maintain situational awareness. Television systems can be made redundant. The King County EOC has cable television, backed up by a satellite system and then an antenna on the roof if the other higher technology systems fail.

Flexibility and Open Architecture
What are the new technology systems that will be employed in the next 20-40 years? If you are building a new EOC, flexibility is one of the things that you need to consider. Design flexibility for scalable operations and also for new technology and mission requirements.

During this author’s tours of many EOCs, several issues of flexibility occur frequently. Examples are:

Space needs already exceed space availability by the time the facility is constructed and occupied

Not planning for adequate space for technology systems and pathways has limited improvements in this area

As much as possible, factor in future growth in staffing and technology in your design. You will need to make your case to budget staff whose only role is keeping a lid on your expenditures for the facility.

While technology systems of today are much smaller than their ancestors of 20 years ago, they still require space and cabling. No matter where the computer room is, wires must run from that location to your various work locations. Always plan for expansion when determining the diameter of your communications pipes running from the server room to administrative and operational areas.

Raised flooring is another consideration for allowing the maximum flexibility for the routing and distribution of your various communications and IT systems. The balancing aspect will once again be the cost of raised flooring over other less expensive alternatives that don’t provide the same level of flexibility.

You should plan ahead for the use of all available spaces. For instance, you might have an area designated as storage. During the design phase have this space configured with systems such as electrical power and communications so that it can serve as future office space. This will allow for additional staff growth even when you are not able to get dedicated funding for it in your existing administrative spaces.

Many times EOCs are not dedicated spaces, but serve as conference or training rooms during non-emergency times. Consider the use of flexible wall systems so that you can configure your space based upon needs. In some cases you will have minor emergencies and in others you may need to “grow” the facility to handle a catastrophe.

Wide hallways allow for the movement of people quickly and efficiently. It also allows for the natural ad hoc meetings to occur as people walk through the building without blocking the operations of the facility as a whole.

Security
If you had asked people about the threat of terrorism here in the United States before the 9/11 attacks, most would have rated it significantly lower than it would be rated today. You should be considering what types of threats are emerging worldwide and not discount the fact that those types of attacks might be employed here in North America during the lifetime of the facility.

Layered levels of security are always a good route to take. You might have one level for day to day operations when the threat is lower and then increasing measures as the threat escalates.

Access control in the form of card readers, fencing, gates, security checkpoints and biometric devices might be appropriate. Cameras are cost effective measures for access control and as a deterrent to surveillance operations against your facility.

Designing the driving approach to your facility is easily done for new construction. Eliminating “running starts” and having barriers in place to stop cars and trucks from getting close to your facility are appropriate measures. EOCs located in urban areas may not have this luxury.

Protecting staff by putting blast film over windows is another consideration. Just remember that these films, while minimizing glass shattering, also block radio waves from entering your building, so some form of repeater system may be needed for your communications systems.

EOCs are probably not primary targets for terrorists, but they would make excellent secondary targets for follow-on attacks, since they will be activated and full of people responding to the situation.

Summary
EOCs are complex facilities that now rival hospitals in the complexity of systems that need support and the diversity of the functions that occur within their walls. When it comes to designing a facility it would be wise to use an architectural firm that is experienced specifically in EOC design. There are many pitfalls that can be eliminated by having a team of experts working to advise you and also help you make the case for survivability, redundancy, communications, flexibility and security.