UW Emergency Management

February 23, 2017

EOC Activation Level Changes in 2017 CEMP Update

With the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan (CEMP) in the final stages of the most current update, we wanted to provide some insight on one of the bigger changes in the plan. The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activation levels. The previous version had the lowest level of activation as a one (only UWEM staff) and the highest level of activation as a 3 (all EOC seats are filled).

The current updated 2017 CEMP has incorporated National Standard for the University EOC activation levels, with level 3 being the lowest (only UWEM staff) and 1 being the highest (all EOC seats are filled). Our EOC activation levels are based on established triggers and communication with the Incident Commander or Unified Command. This is a critical element of information decision making to support University operations.

With the changes in our activation levels, we are now in alignment with the City of Seattle EOC, the King County Emergency Coordination Center, and the State of Washington Emergency Management Division Eresource levels imageOC, and will hopefully facilitate better coordination, communication, and resource requests. We’ve included a simple image that shows the difference in what a level 3 or 1 means if you have taken any Incident Command System courses you know that we base everything on type and capability of a resource (including people, not just stuff). For this purpose, we’ll use a earthmover to show the capability of the equipment.