Shared situational awareness in Emergency Response Centers

There are emergency response centers in most different industries and sectors. Some are permanently staffed and others are occupied only when an incident occurs. Whatever the type they share a common goal to support operational personnel when unforeseen circumstances arise. To achieve this there is a dependency on being able to quickly achieve effective situational awareness. It sounds simple, but can be demanding in practice. It is about being able to rapidly put together an information space consisting of both static and dynamic data; checklists, operating procedures and notification lists alongside actions and operational information sources (production data, CCTV, staff list, etc.). Each scenario has a described information need where everyone shares and contributes to the overall knowledge landscape.

The Challenge

One of our clients with an emergency response center (manned 24/7) calls in on-duty specialists and the emergency management team when an incident occurs. They are expected to quickly familiarize themselves with the criticality of the incident and the potential for injury. With operational information from many different sources and requirements for process compliance (notification, documentation, etc.), it is challenging to quickly get started. Uncertainty about where information is stored, who is responsible for it and when this occurs leads to a loss of time and accuracy. The collection and placement of information on screens is easier to consume when it is standardized and partially automated.

Enify contributing to the Solution

The emergency response center chose Enify as one of its solutions to create better situational awareness across the emergency response team.

The client set up Enify to:

1. Capture a series of defined scenarios for different events with the appropriate information, applications and roles.
2. Quickly retrieve available information related to the scenario and be able to share the scenario with other relevant participants whether they are in the room or not.

Value Delivered

The main value drivers Enify delivered were:

• Standardized information retrieval to ensure that work is done consistently – this ensures quality
• Rapid automatic provision of the required data provides information integrity for work in time-critical situations
• Capability to fast focus on relevant information and change focus when needed
• More effective communication, collaboration & decision making under pressure
• Better understanding of the underlying processes

Operations center, integrated operations center, emergency response center, machinery support center, planning center, logistics center, support center; there are so many names! We have gathered experience from more than 30 different initiatives around the world - and have now created a guide for you that summarizes what to consider when building a successful operations center.  

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