Incident, emergency and crisis management at ETH Zurich
In order to manage events such as disruptions, emergencies or crises in the most coordinated manner possible, ETH Zurich has management systems with the appropriate structural and procedural organisation. The aim is to ensure the optimum safety of all ETH members and to maintain university operations – teaching, research and knowledge transfer – even in the event of an incident.
In the event of malfunctions or emergencies, the alarm centre takes over coordination as the central point of contact. It alerts the responsible persons or intervention units such as the on-call service, security service, first aid team, chemical intervention team or fire alarm team for a rapid response on site.
In the event of major incidents with a significant impact on research and teaching activities, an emergency or crisis management team will be deployed. This team will make decisions and initiate appropriate measures to stabilise operations.
Safety officers and managers in the organisational units make an important contribution to dealing with incidents through their expertise and presence on site.
Depending on the incident, efficient management requires not only the internal resources of ETH Zurich mentioned above, but also cooperation and support from external partners such as the fire brigade, police, ambulance service, UZH, USZ, Federal Office of Public Health, AWEL, Suva, specialist companies, etc.
What is a malfunction, an emergency or a crisis?
Impairs operation, but can be quickly remedied with existing resources (e.g. technical defect).
Acute danger to people, buildings or the environment requires immediate action (e.g. medical emergency, fire or chemical incident).
Serious incident with ETH-wide impact, requiring extensive coordination over a longer period of time (e.g. infrastructure failure, threat situation).