Government operations
Emergency Operations / EOC
Stand up the emergency operations center, and tell residents where the shelters are.
When the storm comes, run the response from one board: open an incident, track shelters and the resources moving to them, keep a timeline of every decision, and push an alert — all in one place. Residents see an open-shelters page in both languages, so the question "where do I go" has a public answer.
The challenge
When a hurricane or a freeze hits, the emergency operations center runs on a whiteboard, a group text, and three people who each hold part of the picture. Shelters open and nobody outside the room knows; resources move and the timeline lives in someone's memory. And the residents who most need to know where to go are the ones reading in Spanish.
In practice
Landfall, and the board lights up
A storm is two days out. The county opens an incident and the EOC board becomes the single picture: shelters going from "on standby" to "open" with their capacity and current occupancy, resources — buses, generators, water — logged as they're committed, and a timeline that records each decision with a timestamp instead of trusting anyone's memory. From the same place, the coordinator pushes an alert through the communications module, so the warning goes out by text, email, and app push in both languages.
Meanwhile, residents open the public shelters page on their phones — in English or Spanish — and see which shelters are open and where, without calling 911 to ask. After it's over, the timeline is the after-action record: who decided what, when, and what it cost, ready for the state reimbursement paperwork.
What it does
- 01
An incident board
Open an incident and run the whole response from one live board, so everyone works from the same picture instead of a whiteboard.
- 02
Shelters with capacity
Track each shelter's status and occupancy against capacity, so the room knows where there's room before sending people there.
- 03
Resources in motion
Log the buses, generators, crews, and supplies committed to the incident, and where they're headed.
- 04
A timestamped timeline
Every decision and event recorded with a time, so the after-action review reads from the record, not from memory.
- 05
Send the alert from here
Push an emergency alert through the communications channels — text, email, push — without leaving the incident.
- 06
A public shelters page
Residents see which shelters are open and where, in English and Spanish, so "where do I go" has a public answer.
How it works
Open the incident
Stand up the incident on the EOC board when the event begins.
Track shelters and resources
Mark shelters open with their capacity, and log the resources committed to the response.
Keep the timeline, send the alerts
Record each decision on the timeline and push alerts to residents in both languages.
Publish shelters, then debrief
Residents see the open-shelters page; afterward, the timeline becomes the after-action and reimbursement record.
English and Spanish
Bilingual by design
The public shelters page and the emergency alerts are fully bilingual — in a disaster, the resident who reads Spanish learns where the open shelter is at the same moment everyone else does. The EOC board the coordinators run is an internal command tool; the bilingual commitment lives on the public-facing shelter page and the alerts that go out.
CiVQ AI — included in every package
CiVQ AI: brief the room, draft the alert
CiVQ AI can summarize the incident timeline into a situation brief for the next shift, and draft the emergency alert in both languages from a few facts — what's happening, where to go — so the warning goes out fast and reads clearly. The coordinator approves before anything is sent.
Who it's for
Get started
See CiVQ in your language.
Book a 30-minute walkthrough with our team in Rio Grande City. We'll tailor it to your city, county, or district.
Bilingual support included at every tier.