Emergency Command Centre Design and Setup

An Emergency Command Centre is the engineered facility from which an incident commander, the planning section, the operations section, and the logistics function manage the response to a major event such as a fire, explosion, toxic release, cyber incident, weather emergency, or security event. The discipline combines siting and survivability analysis that places the facility outside credible blast, fire, and toxic envelopes per API RP 752 and 753, structural and architectural design that is typically blast resistant per the ASCE Petrochemical Energy Committee, a full ICS organisation layout covering the Incident Commander, Section Chiefs, Unit Leaders, Communications, and Documentation, redundant communications across primary fibre, microwave and satellite backup, cellular, HF and VHF radio, and public PSTN, live data integration with mirrored DCS and SCADA, the fire and gas HMI, CCTV, weather, AIS and GIS, and social media monitoring, power and HVAC engineered for 96 hour autonomous operation, decision support tools spanning incident management software, mapping, and plume modelling integration, and habitability with workstations, a rest area, and food, water, and sanitation for 72 hour sustained response. The period since Deepwater Horizon and the increasing frequency of multi day major events such as Husky Superior in 2018, Beirut in 2020, and the Texas freeze in 2021 have made the 96 hour autonomous ECC the industry baseline expectation for high hazard facilities, and our team designs to that baseline.