New York City’s new Office of Emergency Management (OEM) replaces the city’s former headquarters in the World Trade Center, destroyed on September 11, 2001.

The new office, a renovation of an existing building, includes a 100-person emergency operations center, as well as a watch command, situation room, press and conference center, and general office space. Shen Milsom & Wilke provided coordinated design services for failsafe systems for voice, data and video, multimedia, and the 2,000-square-foot data center. Work also included acoustical design.

The project involved close coordination among the various local, state, and federal user groups—New York City police and fire, US Coast Guard, FBI, and CIA for example—and a solid understanding of all the building’s applications.

The emergency operations center is the most critical space within the OEM. It is where various emergency and law enforcement organizations act together to plan and execute coordinated action during emergencies.

At the center of the room, back-to-back high-resolution displays face workstations at either side of the room. Additional large format displays on the walls make a wide variety of information just a glance away.

The OEM must support up to 6,000 calls per hour during an emergency. Working with a specialized vendor, Shen Milsom & Wilke designed a highly reliable phone system that is independent of the public phone system.

Watch command is a 24/7 space where officials monitor various sources--911 calls, news, and weather, for example - for emergencies or crises. Watch "commanders" are on duty continuously, no exceptions. They activate the emergency operations center when required.

The commanders’ workstations face a large central display with multiple images. Sources of these images include television, camera feeds from throughout the metropolitan area, and proprietary video cameras at various secure locations.

The amount of computer equipment at each workstation is intense. To alleviate crowding and heat load, workstation PCs are mounted in a separate, cooled environment.

The watch command and emergency operations center are linked by a network of dedicated circuits and diverse paths so that signals received by or originating in one area may be immediately and effectively shared with all others.

The situation room provides extra space so that multiple incidents may be managed, or it may serve as a room where high-ranking officials can monitor a problem and discuss solutions. It includes a video wall and flanking LCDs. Microphones and cameras allow videoconferencing--an important tool in the decision-making process.

Acoustical design included isolation, specialized interior finishes, and noise control. Specific areas of concern were the sensitive compartmented information facility (where secret information is discussed and analyzed) and the mayor’s conference room. Also, the emergency generator required isolation and separation to ensure that engine noise would not impact the facility.

photos by Michael Leiboff

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