Welcome to eoc.online!

Welcome to our nascent website, eoc.online. A long-planned dream, my goal is to streamline the creation and operation of smaller EOC’s around the country and globe, highlighting outstanding resources that exist but which may not be so obvious to those new to the emergency management field.

eoc.online Introduction

eoc.online has been an idea for something like the past decade, born out of my frustration with the paucity of good software offerings for EOCs. Those that existed weren’t very functional or nimble for analysis, and thus tended to be ignored, or used only to document an incident and act as a historical log. Increasingly there is excellent guidance and policies available, but the software is only slowly improving, and most remains out of reach of smaller EOC’s without dedicated staff and limited time to train, maintain, and build a compliant operations center.

An emergency manager currently finds it tough to have all the incident information they (and their team) need readily available. Its a huge problem, but we can do better!

Over time, I hope to work with those of you who agree on the need and find a common path forward, with open-source, secure, readily customizable solutions tailored for emergency management.

Our Logo

The current logo represents the multiple connections all EOCs have. We communicate on many different axes:

• The multicultural & multi-lingual public: residents, homeless, renters, visitors
• Federal, state, regional, county, city, neighborhood, & rural institutions
• Peer government agencies and departments
• Police, fire, health, EMS & other first responders
• Non-profit organizations & their volunteers
• Local businesses, Chambers, and vendors

Each segment has much to offer, but each has their own viewpoints, resources, needs, and concerns. Before, and especially during an intense incident and recovery an Emergency Operations Center are vital to hold communities together.

Now is the time

Civilian Corps were organized back during World War II, but specific, unified guidance for Emergency Managers only became broadly available after the 1980’s wildfires, Coast Guard programs, and especially the National Incident Management System which arose after 9/11 and is only 20 years old. Specific Emergency Operations Center guidance - as apposed to first responder guidance - has only come about in the last 10 years. I hope to write more about some of these changes in the coming year, but I also want to highlight some of the grand resources that exist, but are hidden by age or buried in obscure websites.

Much of this initial content is from a blog I wrote for VashonBePrepared over the years. I’ve left out some of those blogs relating to that organization, but kept others that may help others today or provide a window to the past. In coming months I look forward to expressing some fresh thoughts, now that I have a nice modern Hugo (Jamstack based) website. (Notice the fast page loads.)

We’re all on a critically important path, and together I hope we can work together to streamline adopt of great software, technology, policies, and guidance!