A Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC) is a physical location for the coordination of information and resources to support incident management activities. PHEOCs are also referred to as “operations centres”, “situation rooms” and “command centres”. Experience has shown that timely implementation of a PHEOC provides an essential platform for the management of public health emergencies and can help avoid common failings such as lack of clear leadership leading to delayed decision making, mismanagement of resources and poor coordination.