Crisis management is an area that due to the occurrence of more frequent and extensive crisis, both nationwide and internationally, is getting increasingly attention. Thus, to handle crises effectively and efficiently the need for command and control systems for preventive and operative crisis management has become increasingly necessary. Hence, more resources must be used on research and development to secure the availability of such command and control resources that will be needed. In this context, the needs and the demands on crisis management systems for command and control must be identified. In this work, an architecture for command and control systems for crisis management is proposed. The architecture is intended to support both preventive and operative crisis management. The architecture is intended for command and control systems that are used in network oriented environments and with a service oriented perspective. Essential for this work has been to consider aspects of IT-security early in the development phase. Further, aspects such as the command and control structure, the functionality of the system, including e.g. decision support, and the capacity for coordination of the activities to be executed have been seen as critical features.