Montana Disaster & Emergency Services
Montana Disaster & Emergency Services — SECC Familiarization Series

Module 5: Lifelines, Information Management, and the COP

How the SECC turns raw information into a shared picture and decisions.
Modules
Module 1: Why ISM Module 2: ICS vs. ISM Module 3: Organization Module 4: Activation Levels Module 5: Lifelines & COP (current) Module 6: A Day in the SECC
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Welcome Back

What This Module Covers

This is the densest module in the series — but also the one that ties everything else together. It covers how the SECC organizes situational awareness around community lifelines, and how that awareness becomes the Common Operating Picture everyone works from.

About 7–9 minutes. Take your time on Screens 3 and 4 — the information chain there is the backbone of how the SECC actually works.

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The Eight Community Lifelines

Rather than tracking a disaster generically, the SECC organizes situational awareness around eight community lifelines — the essential services a community needs to function. When a lifeline is disrupted, that's what response and recovery efforts work to stabilize.

Safety and SecuritySafety and Security
Food, Hydration, ShelterFood, Hydration, Shelter
Health and MedicalHealth and Medical
Energy (Power and Fuel)Energy (Power & Fuel)
CommunicationsCommunications
TransportationTransportation
Hazardous MaterialsHazardous Materials
Water SystemsWater Systems

Every SECC Incident Support Plan is built by analyzing impacts to these eight lifelines, setting stabilization targets for the ones affected, and defining the response activities that move each toward that target.

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From Question to Data Point

The SECC's information gathering isn't ad hoc — it follows a defined chain, from the highest-stakes questions down to the specific data points that answer them.

CIR Immediate notification — Administrator / Governor PIR The SECC's highest-priority "must-know" questions EEI Specific, collectable data points Most urgent — stop-and-notify Highest-priority questions Most granular — what actually gets collected urgency narrows to specificity, left to right
CIR
Critical Information Requirement — information serious enough to require immediate notification up to the DES Administrator or Governor's Office (e.g., a fatality, catastrophic lifeline loss, a mass casualty incident).
PIR
Priority Information Requirement — the SECC's highest-priority "must-know" questions, framed around the lifelines (e.g., "How many customers are without power by county, and what's the estimated restoration time?").
EEI
Essential Element of Information — the specific, collectable data points that answer a PIR (e.g., "number and location of people in shelters," "status of critical facilities on backup power").

Answered PIRs directly feed the SECC's information products — SitReps, the ISP, and the shared picture everyone is working from.

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Turning PIRs Into Action

Approved PIRs drive an Incident Collection Plan (ICP) — essentially an assignment sheet that breaks each PIR into EEIs and assigns them to specific information sources for collection.

When a gap in information can't be filled through routine collection, the Situational Awareness Unit issues a Request for Information (RFI) to get it. As information comes back in, it's continuously checked against open PIRs: has this question been answered? Are new gaps emerging that need a new PIR?

The key idea: this is a continuous loop, not a one-time step. Information comes in, gets analyzed against PIRs, updates the shared picture, and often generates new questions — which restart the cycle.
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The Common Operating Picture

All of that collection and analysis exists to build one thing: the Common Operating Picture (COP) — the single, authoritative, shared display of what's happening, available to every section and partner working with the SECC.

The COP is continuously updated with verified, analyzed information — incident status, resource status, impact assessments, public messaging, and key decisions — so that everyone working from it is working from the same facts.

The COP isn't a static snapshot. It's maintained in real time and feeds — and is fed by — the SitReps and Incident Support Plan the SECC produces each operational period.

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Walking Through an Example

Tap each step to see how one real question moves through the chain.

PIR: "How many residents are displaced, and where are spontaneous shelter locations?" — a question tied to the Food, Hydration, Shelter lifeline.
EEIs: Number and location of people in shelters; status and capacity of known shelter sites; reports of spontaneous (unofficial) shelter activity from local partners.
Destination: Once collected, this updates the COP, feeds the next SitRep, and informs the ISP's stabilization targets for the Food, Hydration, Shelter lifeline.
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Recap

Before the knowledge check:

Eight Lifelines

The organizing frame for statewide situational awareness and stabilization targets.

CIR → PIR → EEI

A defined chain from urgent-notification information down to specific, collectable data.

The COP

The single shared picture everyone works from, continuously updated as PIRs are answered.

Knowledge Check

Quick Reinforcement — Not a Test

No score, no pressure — just a quick way to reinforce the key ideas.

1. How many community lifelines does the SECC use to organize situational awareness?

2. What breaks a Priority Information Requirement (PIR) into specific, collectable data points?

3. What is the Common Operating Picture (COP)?

4. What level of information requires immediate notification to the DES Administrator or higher?

Content in this module is drawn from the Montana DES SECC Operations Manual (2026) and the SECC PIR and ICP Process document. This is a familiarization course; it is not a substitute for position-specific training or the manual itself.

Module 6: A Day in the SECC →