Impact of merging emergency operations centers

Abstract

The problem was that the City of Oshkosh has not studied the impact of merging its emergency operations center with Winnebago County's emergency operations center. It is uncertain what impact merging the emergency operations centers would have had on the City of Oshkosh. The purpose of this field project was to identify the financial and operational impact on the City of Oshkosh if it merges its emergency operations center with the emergency operations center of Winnebago County. The descriptive research approach was utilized to guide the following research questions: (a) What are the guidelines for maintaining an emergency operations center within a city of comparable size to the City of Oshkosh? (b) What, if any, Wisconsin cities, similar in size to the City of Oshkosh have their own emergency operations center, or are combined with their county's emergency operations center? (c) What, if any, process of the City of Oshkosh's emergency operations center with Winnebago County's? The recommendations from the results would be: (a) to continue to have Winnebago County and the City of Oshkosh maintain separate emergency operations centers (b) merge the public information component along with associated responsibilities and infrastructure.