Setting up of Control Rooms

A three-tier controlling system might be set up for disaster management:

1          Central Control Room along with headquarters at Delhi.

2          Regional/State level Control Room to be located at a convenient place in the region/State.

3          Power Station / Grid substation level Control Room.

These Control Rooms should work in a well coordinated manner. The main objectives of these control rooms should be to pool up all the possible resources to ensure continuity of power supply in the country. The control rooms should have:

• Fast communication facilities for exchanging and updating information. (Direct hot line communication and equipment have to be provided for this purpose).
• List of minimum workforce required for continuous operation and maintenance of a particular utility on 24 hours basis with 2 or 3 shifts operation. (A complete list of the personnel/experts at national/ regional level for the operation and maintenance of the utilities should be maintained so that in case of emergency, the experts may be sent for quick fault finding and restoration of power supply.)

Regular mock exercises for different types of crisis should be monitored by these control rooms to achieve the best possible response and efficiency of services under disturbed condition.

Since the plant level emergency management group shoulders the major responsibility in disaster management, we would like to deal with its role and responsibilities in some detail.