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GlossaryDispatch and call records

Emergency communications center

An emergency communications center receives and processes public-safety requests and may dispatch responders. Learn what ECC identifies in agency records.

An emergency communications center, often abbreviated ECC, is an organization that receives and processes requests for emergency assistance and may coordinate the response. The term commonly describes a 911 center, but its responsibilities depend on local arrangements. An ECC can serve multiple communities or response agencies and can handle non-emergency communications as well.

An organization behind the record

The National 911 Program uses emergency communications center alongside public safety answering point, or PSAP, when describing the nation's 911 centers. It explains that these centers are managed by different local and state agencies. ECC is therefore a functional description, not the name of a single national institution. National 911 Program training overview

A reader may encounter the name on a call recording, computer-aided dispatch record, annual report, or performance dashboard. The center may maintain communications records for agencies that retain their own investigative or patient-care reports. These records describe different parts of the same response.

An ECC's organizational name can also persist while its technology changes. Calling a center an ECC does not establish that it has completed a Next Generation 911 upgrade or accepts every form of electronic communication.

Example

Hypothetical example: River County ECC receives a text reporting a small outdoor fire. A telecommunicator gathers the location and forwards the incident to a fire dispatcher in the same organization. A district fire crew responds and later prepares its incident report.

A county ECC activity total might include the incoming text session. A dispatch total might count the incident once, and a resource report might show two responding vehicles. Those figures can all be accurate without representing the same counting unit. The hypothetical center name does not imply a real jurisdiction or current local text capability.

Common confusion

An ECC is different from an emergency operations center, or EOC. The latter supports incident management and coordination during emergencies; it is not simply another name for the place answering routine 911 traffic. FEMA describes EOCs as part of its incident-management framework. FEMA NIMS program

A dispatch center and an ECC can be the same organization. Whether the ECC itself dispatches every service must be checked locally rather than inferred from its title.

What to check locally

Look for the center's agency list, call-handling responsibilities, and records contact. For a performance measure, identify whether the denominator is telephone calls, text sessions, dispatch incidents, or another unit. A centerwide statistic may cover a larger area than a municipal police department's report.

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